A confluence of events – the mass shooting at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic linked to a suspect who’s expressed anti-abortion views and the release of surreptitiously recorded videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing fetal tissue donation programs – will produce particularly charged debates during the 2016 Colorado General Assembly.

Every session, Republicans and Democrats clash over the emotional and divisive issue of abortion, and there’s little middle ground. With Democrats holding the House and Republicans holding the Senate, that’s unlikely to change.

Republican lawmakers have said they will bring bills to defund Planned Parenthood, create a fetal homicide charge, repeal the Affordable Care Act, which includes mandates that insurance companies pay for “abortifacient types of birth control,” and develop some type of response to the purchase and use of fetal tissue for research.

Democrats will continue the fight they lost last session for funding of a program that provides long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC, to low-income and uninsured women in Colorado.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a woman has a constitutionally protected right to decide to have an abortion. States have the ability to pass laws regulating abortions to some extent. But the conversation that will take place in Colorado is more nuanced than that.

State Sen. Owen Hill and Rep. Dan Nordberg, both Republicans from Colorado Springs, will sponsor a bill that requires the state to stop all funding of clinics that perform abortions. Colorado’s constitution already prohibits state dollars being spent on abortions, but Hill and Nordberg believe it still is occurring.

“I know that people have varying views on abortion in our community, but almost everything they agree on is that taxpayers shouldn’t fund abortion,” Hill said. “The constitution says taxpayer funding won’t go to pay for abortion, and we’re going to honor that.”

Cathy Alderman, Vice President of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said its Colorado clinics don’t receive any funding from the state other than Medicaid reimbursements, which is insurance paying for specific healthcare provided to low-income patients.

Alderman said she doesn’t expect last month’s tragedy in Colorado Springs, where three people were killed by a gunman at the clinic, to temper the rhetoric that she said intensified over the summer after the release of the videos.

“In the eight years I have been here, last session there were more anti-abortion, anti-women’s health bills than I have ever seen in Colorado,” she said. “I fully anticipate that to increase. Unfortunately, I think there are going to be some really smart policies that are going to be introduced that have been proven to reduce the need for access to safe, legal abortion. Those policies can’t win in this environment, and that’s a disservice to the women of Colorado.”

Hill called the shooting “pure evil.”

“Only the crassest political hack would be the one to try to politicize that, but I expect it to happen,” he said.

Nordberg said that while political opportunists might want to equate the shooting with anti-abortion legislation, it is “horrible to do so.”

“What happened was a tragedy and I mourn with the rest of our community,” he said. “The fact is, Colorado has a constitutional prohibition in place on public funding of abortion, and it’s incumbent upon the Legislature to ensure compliance.”

Sen. Mary Hodge, D-Brighton, said she intends to fight for the governor’s request for an additional $2.5 million for the LARC program. Hodge said during the time that the state has privately funded the program, teen abortions have decreased by 35 percent and teen pregnancies have fallen by 40 percent.

Republicans opposed the bill largely because they claimed some of the intrauterine devices being used were causing abortions by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. Some said they opposed using state funds to pay for a program that previously had been funded through private donations.

Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, said he hasn’t decided how he will address concerns about the use of fetal tissue in research conducted in Colorado. A state law already prohibits the sale of fetal tissue for a profit. He said he hasn’t gotten answers to his questions about if and how Colorado’s universities are acquiring fetal tissue.

“I’ve made no secret of my concerns with what Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have been doing with the remains of these children,” Lundberg said.

Alderman said Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains doesn’t donate or sell any fetal tissue.

In the aftermath of the shooting, advocates for abortion rights said those who insinuated that Planned Parenthood was profiting from fetal tissue were partially to blame for the violence. The accused gunman, Robert Lewis Dear Jr., called himself a “warrior for the babies.”

Hodge said she will be disappointed if Republicans make an issue over fetal tissue this session.

“The fetal tissue issue has been searched, researched and studied, and the federal government, Congress, has looked at it and found nothing there,” she said.