Image courtesy of Plan C
Michael McLachlan walked up the steps of the US Supreme Court Building alone, with his mind set for the trial, while his family watched from the oval plaza outside. McLachlan was the Colorado Solicitor General in 2000, and was intent on keeping abortion access safe.
Colorado’s “safe access zone (SAZ)” law was at stake. It says that no one could approach closer than 8 feet of a patient without the patient’s permission. This applies when the patient is inside a 100 foot zone, based on the door of a clinic. This law, enacted in 1993, did not limit speech—it only limited unwarranted approach. The law was contested as interfering with the First Amendment right to free speech but was supported by the Colorado courts.
When I asked Barbara McLachlan, Michael’s widow, about the actual trial with the Supremes, she told me about one question asked by Judge Scalia:
“Why is the limit 8 feet?”
McLachlan was always sharp and ready for anything, so replied “Because that is the maximum distance a person can spit.” And Scalia laughed!
Colorado has been very supportive of access to abortion care. It was one of the first states to legalize abortion (1967), before access became legal nation-wide (1973). Although there have been several attempts to decrease this access, we recently provided protection to this right by passing an amendment to the Colorado constitution. It prohibits state and local governments from denying, impeding, or discriminating against that right to abortion. It also repeals the prohibition against using public funds for abortion services.
Unfortunately, many other states have limited access to abortion or completely prohibited this vital part of medical care. Many women are coming to Colorado for abortions. In addition, women are also receiving abortion pills by mail from Colorado-based telemedicine.
Some of the states that forbid abortion care try to keep their women from having abortions. Some laws try to forbid a pregnant woman to leave her state to go to a more liberal state. Nevertheless, abortion providers in Colorado and New Mexico see a lot of patients from Oklahoma and Texas.
Pills have caused a revolution in abortion care. Pills can be mailed to a pregnant person living in a restrictive state; organizations have been started for just that purpose. Plan C (www.plancpills.org) is one of the organizations started to inform women about the availability of abortion care by telemedicine. When contacted by someone who is pregnant and who desires an abortion, Plan C will ask them to fill out a form about their medical history, then (if they qualify) refer them to a site where they can purchase pills for an abortion. This system can be used by anyone in any state in the union, but people in restrictive states are most likely to use it.
The people who actually supply the medication are at risk of retaliation by authorities in restrictive states. Perhaps the worst example is Texas. It has an malevolent law the purpose of which is to intimidate non-Texans who provide medication abortion pills to Texan women. The law would levy a fine of at least $100,000 to someone who prescribes or mails abortion pills to a woman in Texas. This law encourages Texans to spy on each other and relies on fear. The differences of abortion laws in different states has incited interjurisdictional abortion wars.
Coloradans who prescribe abortion pills to people in restrictive states risk being indicted for breaking the law in the other state. Last spring the Colorado legislature voted for a law to offer them protection. The name of the prescriber must be left off the medication. In addition, The new Colorado law shields abortion patients and providers from actions initiated by other states.
©Richard Grossman MD, 2026