In the face of fascist attempts to control our reproduction and gender expression while also increasing state surveillance that violates our privacy, it’s important to recognize the safe havens in our midst. Here is what some U.S. states are doing to ensure that access to abortion and gender-affirming care is legal and secure within their borders.

The Massachusetts State Senate on Thursday, March 9 passed a $368.7 million supplemental budget for Fiscal Year 2023.

With access to a widely-used abortion medication on the line, Massachusetts is trying to walk and chew gum at the same time – warning local pharmacies that they must continue supplying the medications, while gearing up for a potentially disruptive ruling out of Texas that could throw abortion care systems into chaos.

“We have to recognize that Roe was never a full guarantee of access to the full spectrum of reproductive health care,” said Claire Teylouni, the director of government affairs for New England-based Reproductive Equity Now.

"It was part of the anti-abortion movement's plan to ban abortion nationwide, and now anti-abortion extremists are trying to reach across state borders into states that have made it clear they will protect abortion access and to ban and restrict care," Hart Holder said.

Abortion rights advocates have been warning forever that antichoice zealots would not stop at overturning Roe v Wade last summer, a reversal that cleared the way for bans in roughly half the country. The extremists have always wanted a national ban, and one that goes beyond surgical abortion to medication-assisted abortion.

Massachusetts providers are preparing for the impact of a Texas antiabortion lawsuit that could limit access to medication-assisted abortion, a major change that would mark the first time abortion access would be restricted in the state since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June.

The Massachusetts Legislature is trying, once again, to create a state-funded public education campaign about crisis pregnancy centers, antiabortion facilities accused of posing as reproductive health care clinics.

Massachusetts politicians like to hold the Bay State up as a mecca of reproductive rights. Yet while pregnant people can choose whether to carry a baby to term, they have less choice in where to deliver that baby.

“Massachusetts is an incredibly important state in the abortion access puzzle,” said Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now. “We have an opportunity to set the pace for the nation and I think we have an obligation to advance access to care not just for residents of Massachusetts but people across the country.”

“City leaders are in a really unique position in their communities because they’re on the ground, they understand where people get their information, and they can reach more vulnerable populations in a different way than some other leaders can in the same space,” said Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of Reproductive Equity Now.

“I could not think of a more perfect or deserving State of the Union guest than Kate Dineen,” Hart Holder said in a statement to MassLive. “Kate turned her pain into power, using her story to drive forward legislation in Massachusetts to expand access to abortion care throughout pregnancy.”

The Reproductive Equity Now Foundation—along with Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, The Women’s Bar Foundation, The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and five law firms—launched a new Abortion Legal Hotline.

As the retail pharmacy chains prepare to certify their pharmacies to dispense mifepristone — the first of two medications taken in a medication abortion regimen — I can’t help but remind CVS and Walgreens that there is more they can and should be doing to expand access to all types of reproductive health care.

The hotline, which went live Monday morning, provides free and confidential legal advice to patients and providers seeking abortion care in the commonwealth.

Rebecca Holder, president of the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation, said reproductive equity is about more than access to abortion.

When a patient or provider calls the hotline — which went live Monday morning — coordinators from the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation and the Women’s Bar Foundation will help connect the callers to one of about 150 volunteer attorneys who are specially trained, and come from one of five of Boston's most prominent law firms or the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.