Politico | Abortion-rights advocates lay out their next move
By Lisa Kashinsky
Story Originally Appeared in Politico Playbook
‘A BITTERSWEET ANNIVERSARY’ — Fifty years after Roe v. Wade guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion and seven months after the Supreme Court stripped that away, reproductive rights issues are squarely back with states. With that in mind, abortion-rights advocates are preparing for their next legislative push on Beacon Hill — and looking to the new occupant of the corner office for help.
Abortion-rights advocates lauded the Legislature last year for passing a post-Roe law, signed by Republican then-Gov. Charlie Baker, bolstering protections for patients and providers and expanding access to the procedure after 24 weeks of pregnancy. But they later dinged Baker for vetoing $1 million for a public education campaign on so-called crisis pregnancy centers, operations that seek to dissuade people from getting abortions.
Securing that money is now a focal point of Reproductive Equity Now’s sweeping legislative agenda for the new session, pieces of which are included in several bills lawmakers filed last week:
— Requiring health insurance plans to cover the full spectrum of pregnancy care, from prenatal to postpartum.
— Mandating Medicaid coverage of doula services.
— Expanding BIPOC access to abortion by advancing recommendations laid out last year by the legislatively created Special Commission on Racial Inequalities in Maternal Health.
— Establishing a five-year pathway to universal, affordable and high-quality early education and child care beginning at birth.
As for that public awareness campaign, Reproductive Equity Now is looking to Gov. Maura Healey and legislative leaders to fund it in their upcoming budget proposals.
Healey has been an “extraordinary partner” as attorney general, Rebecca Hart Holder, Reproductive Equity Now’s executive director and a member of Healey’s transition team, told Playbook.
“I am hopeful about having that kind of partnership in the executive branch," Hart Holder said, adding that post-Roe, “it’s really incumbent on [blue states] like Massachusetts, New York and California to be normalizing and mainstreaming abortion care” in the face of red-state restrictions.
Healey was supportive but noncommittal on REN’s agenda in her interview with Playbook last week. “I need to look more closely at certain proposals and learn more,” she said. “But as a general matter I am going to, as governor, make sure I’m doing everything I can to protect women’s access to abortion, to protect women’s access to health care and to make sure that we are addressing racial and ethnic disparities that have persisted for far too long.”