Split along straight party lines, the Colorado Senate approved a bill Wednesday to codify the right to abortion in state law. The bill goes to Gov. Jared Polis, who has said he will sign it.

After 13 hours of debate Tuesday and another two hours on Wednesday, the state Senate passed, on a party-line 2015 vote, House Bill 1279, which would enshrine in Colorado law the unequivocal right to an abortion.

The bill was not amended during its passage in the Senate and heads directly to Gov. Jared Polis, who is expected to sign it.

HB 1279 declares that every pregnant individual has a “fundamental right” to continue the pregnancy or undergo an abortion, and every individual has a fundamental right to use or refuse contraception. The bill also declares that a “fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of the state.”

The bill is a preemptive effort in response to an expected decision in June by the U.S. Supreme Court, which is considering whether to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1972 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. HB 1279 appears to be the first time since 2003 that a bill dealing with abortion has reached the floor of the Colorado House or Senate. The 2003 law requires parents be notified when their minor child seeks an abortion, although it does not allow parents to block the procedure.

The Senate Republican Caucus issued a statement Monday that all 15 members in the caucus have “independently” decided to oppose HB 1279.

Colorado would become “the most radical abortion state in the Union,” the GOP statement said.

Republicans also claimed the bill could erode parental rights, which turned into an amendment during Tuesday’s debate that failed to gain enough votes to pass.

Tuesday’s Senate debate was unusual in many ways, including in how it began — with a 20-minute explanation from Minority Leader Sen. Chris Holbert, R-Douglas County, on legislative process and why his caucus would stay and fight, rather than leave the Senate, as happened in Texas when that state’s Senate Democrats took off during the Texas legislature’s work on SB 8. That action that denied the Senate its twothirds quorum.

The math doesn’t work that way in Colorado, Holbert said, with his caucus representing just 15 out of the chamber’s 35 members, not enough for a simple majority.

The bill the Senate was about to debate is the most important one he’s worked on in his 11 years in the legislature, Holbert said, even more important than guns or civil unions.

“I’m not going to be absent for this vote,” he said, adding the only thing that could stop the legislation is a simple majority vote against it.

The GOP leader said people have pleaded with him to shut down the process, offered him documents that his caucus could use to filibuster the bill, to carry on the debate for 24 hours or even 50 days, which is what remains of the 2022 session.

The problem with that, he said, is what’s in the Colorado Constitution, legislative rules and Mason’s rules, which govern debate in the Senate. There is no such thing as a true filibuster in the chamber, given that any debate on a bill must address that bill, Holbert said.

He also pointed to Senate Rule 9B — “shall the question be put” — which allows the chamber, via a simple majority vote, to allow just one more hour of debate.

“I’m confident that [the majority] will not let this debate go on for 50 days or even for two,” Holbert said. “For those who want us to go on for 50 days, it’s not a matter of willingness. ... We can’t stop this process.”

Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, D- Commerce City, thanked Holbert for explaining the rules, procedures and laws.

“The people of Colorado are better off for it,” Moreno said, adding he expected a passionate and very personal debate.

“We are committed to a fair debate,” he said. “We will make sure the debate is honored, because the issue calls for it.”

HB 1279 sponsor Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, began the debate by thanking colleagues and legislative staffers for their long hours of work, and her hopes for a debate where senators appreciate and understand perspectives and the implications of policy.

Gonzales then recounted how a fellow student from a high-school English class had an abortion and how she had judged that girl and vowed never to make that mistake again. Then last September, after SB 8 passed in Texas, she went to a spontaneous rally against that law, and hearing from Coloradans who remembered the “before times” — meaning before Roe v. Wade and being asked, “What will you do?” — HB 1279 is the answer to that question, Gonzales said.

“An individual should make those decisions without any of us putting our thumb on the scale,” she said.

This will be an unusual debate, Sen. Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, added. Normally, lawmakers take on more practical matters, Lundeen said, but Tuesday’s debate is about life and death. He was also the first, but far from the last, to cite the Bible as reason for supporting or opposing the bill.

Rep. Jeff Bridges, D- Greenwood Village, stated later in the day that people told him they hoped his faith — he holds a master’s degree in divinity from Harvard — would guide him.

“It does,” Bridges said, adding he learned that Christians, even members of the clergy, have vastly different views on almost everything, including abortion. “There is no single Christian position on abortion,” Bridges said, citing Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Evangelical Lutherans, Unitarians and most Jews, and more than half of self-reporting Catholics who are prochoice and want abortion to remain legal. He asked people to vote their conscience but not to cite their views as the only Christian or moral one.

“No one has a monopoly on truth besides God, and we are not angels,” he said.

No one regulates reproductive care for men, said Sen. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora. Men can impregnate as many women as possible, yet in her 11 years in the legislature, she has never debated a bill that decides the reproductive parts of a man, she said, adding, “This bill is about controlling women and their right to choose.”

The debate included some of the same issues raised in the House during its nearly 24-hour debate on the bill on March 11 and 12, such as parental notification. An amendment from Holbert to affirm that 2003 law failed and drew from Sen. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, the argument that HB 1279 would not change the 2003 law. Another amendment attempted to add a petition clause, a tactic also tried by House Republicans. It, too, failed.

An amendment from Sen. John Cooke, R- Greeley, provided a graphic description of the abortion procedure. Cooke also tried an amendment on free speech, and when it was rejected as not fitting under the title, asked that the bill be read at length. The reading didn’t take long, since the bill is only six pages, and Cooke then read it himself, much more slowly.

Adding in the debate time in two committees to the time on the House and Senate floor, the bill took more than 66 hours of discussion over the past two weeks, including a nearly 24hour debate in the House, probably a state record.

Colorado GOP Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown said in a statement after the bill’s final passage Wednesday that “this is a dark day for the Colorado Democrat Party and any individual who respects the sanctity of life.” If the governor decides to sign the bill, he will put Colorado’s abortion laws on par with China and North Korea, she said.

Burton Brown added that “Republicans know every child deserves to be protected in love and in law. We will never stop standing up for life.”