Side note: I find it fascinating waking every day to write the Scott Sheet because I read both Denver dailies – the Denver Post and the Denver Gazette. The fascination is in how their front pages vary. Bias exists not only in how you report the news, but in what is and is not reported.
Today, the Denver Post gave its front page over to a New York Times reprint on abortion “shield laws,” where blue states like Colorado, New York, and California are openly refusing to cooperate with subpoenas, extraditions, or civil judgments from abortion-ban states.
The piece lays out the knife fight now underway over whether states must honor one another’s abortion laws after Dobbs. “Shield laws” in at least eight pro-abortion states protect telemedicine prescribers who mail pills into pro-life states and bar officials from cooperating with out-of-state subpoenas and extraditions. New York’s AG Letitia James just jumped into a Texas-v-New-York showdown over a default judgment against a New York doctor, a case widely expected to rocket toward SCOTUS. Meanwhile Texas passed a bounty bill letting private citizens sue anyone tied to abortion pills for at least $100,000, while New York, Colorado, Washington, Massachusetts and especially California are tightening anonymity rules to frustrate enforcement.
Colorado angle: the article notes states like Colorado have passed measures that let prescribers keep their names off pill bottles, while California considers scrubbing names of prescriber, patient, and pharmacist entirely to foil prosecutions in ban states. Wow. Worry about medicine safety at all?! That anonymization push is central to the looming Full Faith and Credit fight.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Shield laws vs. state bans. Pro-abortion states block cooperation with subpoenas and extradition and protect telemed prescribers who mail pills into pro-life states. That is a sharp break from normal interstate comity.
- NY steps into TX brawl. Letitia James moved to defend New York’s shield law after Ken Paxton sought to enforce a Texas default judgment against a New York doctor in a New York court.
- Texas escalates. New law invites private suits for at least $100,000 against anyone who mails or prescribes abortion meds to Texans and tries to wall off shield-law defenses.
- Blue states double down. “Shield Law 2.0” in New York and anonymity rules in CO, WA, MA and proposed in CA aim to make cross-border enforcement harder.
- Constitutional collision ahead. NY’s side touts a penal-judgment exception to Full Faith and Credit. TX says NY is hostile to its public acts and must honor its judgments. See you at the Supreme Court.
My Bottom Line
Colorado voters already settled the in-state question. Abortion is legal here. I abhor the decision, but the voter has spoken. So let’s stop hiding behind feel-good euphemisms. “Reproductive health provider” means abortion clinic. “Abortion care” means the taking of a life. And don’t get me started on “abortion rights.” Rights are granted by God and protected by the government. God granted you the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness – you know, natural law kind of stuff. He did not grant you the right to kill a child. The government permits it, but I am fully confident that God did not grant that “right.” So stop calling it a “right.” It is not.
But it’s all legal in Colorado, so why the scented-candle language? If you are proud of the policy, call it what it is. Whew. Got that off my chest…
The real fight is interstate, and that’s where the hypocrisy is thicker than the I-25 traffic jam. Blue states shout “states’ rights” when they like the outcome, then turn around and ship pills into red states while telling those states their laws do not matter. That is federalism as performance art.
Here is the constitutional heartbeat of the matter at hand:
Full Faith and Credit Clause – Article IV, Section 1
“Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”
What it means: States generally must recognize each other’s laws, records and judgments. Your Colorado marriage certificate works in Texas. A Nebraska judgment can be enforced in New York. Congress set the proof and effect rules through laws like 28 U.S.C. § 1738.
Now, the Denver Post’s front-page piece previews New York’s reply: the penal-judgment exception. Translation in plain English: “Texas can’t make New York punish what New York protects.” That’s an argument, not a slam dunk. It will be litigated. But let’s cut the crap. If Texas obtains a civil judgment and follows the rules Congress prescribed, the default posture in a union of states is to honor it. When California and New York actively design systems to frustrate service, proof, and enforcement across borders, that is not “compassion.” It is nullification with prettier fonts.
Colorado specifics: when our government helps mask prescriber identities on pill packages, and California scrubs the names of prescriber, patient and pharmacist entirely, the purpose is not “privacy” in the abstract. It is to obstruct sister-state law enforcement. You can support legal abortion in Colorado and still admit that interstate gamesmanship erodes the very comity that keeps a 50-state republic stitched together.
My take, straight up: If Colorado can export its policy by mail and call it virtue, then don’t whine when another state exports its policy here. Today, it is pills. Tomorrow, it could be guns, weed, gender policy, you name it. You either believe in states’ rights for everyone or you believe in power for your side. Pick one.
A federalist way forward – common sense that suburban normies can stomach:
- Speak plain English. No euphemism fog.
- Respect Full Faith and Credit for civil judgments while Congress clarifies the line between civil and penal enforcement in this space.
- Use interstate compacts that set rules of the road for telemedicine across borders instead of “catch me if you can” lawfare.
- In Colorado, keep the policy you voted for inside Colorado. Do not conscript other states’ courts by booby-trapping proof and service.
- Let local control mean something again. Denver should stop micromanaging everything from schools to pharmacies like a central-planning hobby shop.
You want a constitutional republic or a coast-to-coast food fight. Because right now, blue states are mailing their morals into red states, red states are lawyering up like it’s the Alamo with footnotes, and the Supreme Court is the only adult left to tell everyone to use their inside voices.
If you believe in federalism, act like it.
