Colorado already lets a woman get an abortion at any point in her pregnancy.
A Denver doctor is suing to erase the one protection left for minors.
A judge cleared that lawsuit to move forward on Aug. 17.
Judge Lets Cohen v Polis Proceed Against Colorado's Parental Notification Law
Dr. Rebecca Cohen performs abortions at a Denver clinic.
She's suing Gov. Jared Polis, the Colorado Medical Board, and the state itself.
Her target is a law that's stood since 2003.
Colorado's Parental Notification Act requires written notice to a parent at least 48 hours before a minor's abortion.
The law doesn't require permission.
A parent can't stop the abortion.
They get to know it's happening, nothing more.
Even that was too much for Cohen.
Her lawsuit claims the notice requirement violates Amendment 79, the constitutional right to abortion Colorado voters passed in 2024.
Denver District Court Judge Ian Kellogg refused to throw the case out.
He was careful about what that actually means.
Kellogg made clear he wasn't ruling on the law's constitutionality, writing only that the claim doesn't "rise to the level of unconstitutional discrimination" as a settled matter yet.
The law stays in effect while the case plays out.
Rupali Sharma of the Lawyering Project, Cohen's attorney, called the ruling a victory anyway.
"No one should be forced to remain pregnant, give birth, and become a parent," Sharma said, arguing no young person should face that outcome unwillingly.
Archbishop Aquila Warned About Amendment 79 And Parental Rights Before It Passed
Denver's Archbishop Samuel Aquila saw this coming before Amendment 79 even passed.
He wrote a public letter in September 2024 urging Catholics to vote no.
Colorado has "no age restriction on abortion," Aquila warned, and Amendment 79 would keep parents from ever learning their own daughter had one.
He named exactly who could exploit that silence.
A boyfriend, a coach, a teacher, a school counselor.
Any adult with something to hide from a teenager's parents.
Voters passed Amendment 79 anyway, 62 percent to 38 percent.
Two years later, Cohen's lawsuit is testing whether Aquila's warning was right.
Colorado isn't the only state where this fight is happening.
Nevada faces a nearly identical challenge from Planned Parenthood, filed in 2025.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld parental notification laws twice in 1990, in Hodgson v. Minnesota and Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health.
New Jersey's top court went the other way in 2000 and struck its own notification law down.
Every state that enshrines abortion in its constitution becomes a new test case for whether parents get pushed out entirely.
Colorado already leads the nation on how far that erosion can go.
Colorado is one of only a handful of states that allows abortion at any point in pregnancy, for any reason, with no gestational limit at all.
Parental notification was the last guardrail left standing after that.
Cohen's lawsuit is the attempt to knock it down too.
What Governor Polis Promised Parents In 2022
Jared Polis signed Colorado's Reproductive Health Equity Act back in 2022.
He included a signing statement making one thing explicit.
Nothing in that law would touch the parental notification requirement already on the books.
Polis is the named defendant in a lawsuit trying to erase exactly that requirement.
He didn't write Cohen's lawsuit and he didn't ask for this fight.
But as governor, it's his own Department of Law defending the statute he once promised to leave alone.
Judge Kellogg didn't strike down the law.
He only said Cohen's claim deserves a hearing.
That hearing is coming, and Colorado parents won't get a vote on the outcome the way they did on Amendment 79.
A judge, not a ballot box, decides this one.
Polis made a promise to parents in writing three years ago.
He doesn't get to sit this one out.
As governor, Polis can direct his own Department of Law to defend the Parental Notification Act on the merits, not on procedural technicalities alone, all the way through trial.
He can say publicly, before the hearing, that the promise from 2022 still holds.
Colorado parents deserve to hear him say it before a judge decides whether his word still means anything.
Sources:
- Elizabeth Ervin, "Colorado lawsuit seeking to end parental notice for minors' abortions moves forward," Pregnancy Help News, August 27, 2026.
- "Lawsuit Challenging Parental Notification for Abortion Will Proceed," Colorado Times Recorder, August 21, 2026.
- Samuel Aquila, "No on 79: Archbishop urges opposition to dangerous pro-abortion amendment," Denver Catholic, September 2024.
- "Parental-involvement laws common even in abortion-protecting states," STAT News, June 10, 2026.
- "State regulation of abortion upon minors: the Supreme Court permits parental notification statutes," PubMed/National Library of Medicine.
