Colorado Will Require College Health Centers to Offer the Abortion Pill, and Forbids Insurers to Charge for the Risk

What is a college student health center for?

For most families, the answer is flu shots, sprained ankles, and a nurse who knows their kid's name. Starting August 1, 2027, Colorado adds abortion pills to the list.

In 2024, Colorado voters added a right to abortion to the state constitution through Amendment 79. Lawmakers have built on it since. In 2025, they made the state's Medicaid program pay for abortion. Now, with HB26-1335, they are requiring access on college campuses. The bill's opening findings base it on the state constitution's right to reproductive health care and on Colorado's Equal Rights Amendment, and they say "true equality cannot be achieved without access to reproductive health care, including abortion."

1. It sets a requirement. Starting August 1, 2027, a college "that operates a student health center shall provide access to abortion medication to all students enrolled at the institution."
2. It covers private colleges. The law applies to state colleges and universities, local community colleges, and private colleges and universities.
3. It puts the pills on campus. If the health center has its own pharmacy, that pharmacy "must maintain a stock of abortion medication" and provide it somewhere on campus: at the pharmacy, at the health center, or wherever students usually pick up prescriptions. Colleges may also use telehealth, meaning a doctor's visit by video, or hire an outside provider.
4. It covers clinics without a pharmacy. A health center without its own pharmacy must either send the prescription to an off-campus pharmacy or have a provider on staff hand out the medication.
5. It protects the records. A college may not knowingly hand over a student's medical records, billing records, or precise location data related to an abortion when another state asks for them in order to punish that care.
6. It protects the college's insurance. An insurance company that covers the college against malpractice claims "must not cancel, refuse to renew, or increase premiums" because the college follows this law.

The law does not require a health center to offer or stock abortion pills if doing so goes against "the institution's sincerely held religious beliefs or practices." It does not require anyone to break federal law or rules from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or to put a college's federal grants at risk. And it lets a provider refer a student somewhere else when the provider's medical judgment says that is best for the student.

The religious exemption is real, and it matters. A faith-based college in Colorado can keep its health center out of this. It deserves credit.

Now look at where the exemption stops. It protects the college's beliefs, as an institution. A private college that is not religious has no exemption at all, no matter what its board or donors believe. And at a public university, a nurse or pharmacist who objects has no protection in this law for their conscience, beyond the right to refer a student elsewhere based on medical judgment.

The bill's findings call abortion medication "a generally accepted standard of medical practice." If that is true, a campus prescription carries the same kind of risk as any other routine care, and insurers would price it that way.

So why does the law need to forbid insurers from raising premiums?

Nobody has to order insurers to ignore the risk of routine care. A state writes that order when it expects insurers to see risk the bill's findings do not admit: lawsuits, legal claims from other states, or medical complications that come with any drug. The insurance rule leaves that risk in place. In practice, it moves the cost off the college's policy and spreads it across everyone else the insurer covers.

The records rule tells the same story from another angle. The law expects other states to come asking.

The main abortion pill, mifepristone, is still being fought over in court and reviewed by the federal government. As of September 2026, it is still available by telehealth and by mail under the FDA's 2023 rules. On May 1, 2026, a federal appeals court sided with Louisiana and brought back the rule that the pill be handed out in person. On May 14, the U.S. Supreme Court put that order on hold while the case continues, and the appeals court heard arguments in September. The FDA began a new safety review of mifepristone in June 2026, expected to take about six months. A federal judge in Texas has paused a separate lawsuit by Florida and Texas until at least December 1, 2026, to let that review finish.

Colorado's requirement starts August 1, 2027. The law says it does not require anyone to break FDA rules. So what "access" means on a Colorado campus will depend on what the FDA and the courts decide before then.

Supporters make their case this way. Abortion is a right in Colorado's constitution by a vote of the people. Students at rural colleges may live hours from the nearest provider. Student health centers already provide birth control and other reproductive care, so supporters see this as one more prescription. The law protects religious colleges and lets any student choose to go off campus. Nothing in it forces a student to do anything.

Those points leave the main question unanswered: what does a campus health center become? Parents send an 18-year-old off to college trusting the campus clinic with their child's care. This law makes that clinic a required source for a drug that ends a pregnancy, including at non-religious private colleges that have no way to opt out. It also tells the insurers who cover the clinic that they may not account for the risk. For families who believe life begins at conception, that is a line the state chose to cross on campus.

HB26-1335 passed the House 41-22 and the Senate 23-12. Its lead sponsors were Representatives Lorena Garcia and Kenny Nguyen and Senators Katie Wallace and Jeff Bridges, all Democrats. Governor Jared Polis signed it May 27, 2026. It carried a "safety clause," which makes a law take effect right away and blocks citizens from putting it on the ballot. The campus requirement itself begins August 1, 2027. As of September 24, 2026, we found no lawsuit challenging it.

A law confident that a service is routine would not need to order insurers to act as if it carries no risk.

This is our read of the law. We encourage you to read it yourself and reach your own conclusions.