“As we navigate ongoing threats to reproductive health care, it’s never been more critical to protect and expand access to contraception in order to ensure every person has the autonomy to make decisions about if, when, and how they become a parent.”

The legislation, “An Act Relative to Hormonal Contraceptives,” which is co-sponsored by state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, eliminates the need for those seeking birth control to schedule an appointment with a primary care physician. Instead, pharmacists can now assess patients and prescribe and dispense birth control like contraceptive patches and oral pills. “This just puts control of your own reproductive destiny back in the patient’s hands,” Sabadosa said.

“It’s just critically important that the Legislature acted in the budget to expand access to birth control, giving pharmacists the ability to prescribe hormonal contraception, which of course includes pills and patches,” Hart Holder said. “[It] means that more people will get access to that consistent birth control that they need.”

Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now, said women often face unnecessary clinical visits or examination requirements which prevents individuals from being able to get birth control, especially with a healthcare system which is backed up due to staffing shortages or from the aftermath of the pandemic.

“The fact that you can’t get a visit with your clinician should not be a barrier to getting birth control,” Hart Holder said.

Groups championing reproductive rights are urging Easthampton city councilors to override the mayor’s veto of an ordinance around reproductive and gender-affirming care at Wednesday’s council. The ordinance, would protect people seeking reproductive and gender-affirming services in the city from being reported to other states. It would also require that the city disseminate to the public relevant information from the Massachusetts Department of Health around such issues.

Every day, companies collect and sell personal location data from our cellphones, revealing where we live, work, seek medical care, and more. Without any federal or state laws to stop them, third-party data brokers are allowed to sell this location data to anyone with a credit card. In a post-Dobbs America, the widespread availability of detailed and personally identifiable location data allows out-of-state law enforcement agencies and anti-abortion bounty hunters to conduct broad fishing expeditions, looking for targets for harassment and worse.

“As extremists continue to wage attacks on maternal health nationwide, Massachusetts has a responsibility to step up, improve birthing outcomes, and eliminate racial disparities for birthing people,” Reproductive Equity Now President Rebecca Hart Holder said. “These statistics are horrifying, and we must remember that these data points are more than numbers. We’re dealing with people’s lives and livelihoods and we cannot wait to act any longer.”

“Both nationwide and in Massachusetts, medication abortion is a hugely popular choice for people looking to end a pregnancy before 10 weeks,” said Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of Reproductive Equity Now, an advocacy group. “And people choose it for a variety of different reasons. It really has been an important part of expanding access throughout Massachusetts … It’s a huge step in filling gaps in abortion access in the southeastern region of the state.”

Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now, said in a statement that the case proves that anti-abortion centers harm not only people seeking abortions but also people who need basic pregnancy care. “These facilities fail to offer safe or legitimate health services, putting patients at serious risk,” she said. “When a person is seeking compassionate abortion or pregnancy care, the last thing they should have to worry about is a false health diagnosis that delays or stands in the way of life-saving treatment.”

In Massachusetts, a coalition of reproductive rights advocates and others are supporting a bill that touches on both the collection and sale of data. It would ban companies from selling or trading cellphone data that can pinpoint someone’s location within 1,850 feet.

A lot has changed in the year since the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling declared there’s no constitutional right to get an abortion. But here’s something that hasn’t changed — the US still doesn’t have a comprehensive national data privacy law.

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Clearway Clinic, a crisis pregnancy center in Worcester, Massachusetts. Its website says it's a medical clinic for pregnant women, but a client who visited the center in the fall says she was misdiagnosed and the clinic failed to adhere to accepted standards of medical care.

“This case is further proof that anti-abortion centers like Clearway not only harm the health and safety of people seeking abortion, but also patients in need of basic pregnancy care,” Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now, said in a statement Thursday. “Anti-abortion centers engage in deceptive advertising practices to lure pregnant people into their clinics before providing patients with disinformation to dissuade them from accessing abortion.”

A Worcester crisis pregnancy center is promising to continue its work, despite a lawsuit alleging it did not tell a woman she had a dangerous, unviable pregnancy. WBUR’s Deborah Becker reports that the lawsuit alleges Clearway Clinic told the patient her pregnancy was healthy after performing an ultrasound last fall. But a month later, she required emergency surgery because the fetus was growing outside the uterus. Her attorneys say if she had been properly diagnosed, the surgery and removal of one of her fallopian tubes could have been avoided.

And, on the heels of a new lawsuit accusing a so-called crisis pregnancy center in Worcester of deceptive advertising, Reproductive Equity Now is launching a public awareness campaign on abortion access. The group will hold organizing events in Gateway Cities, historically underserved communities and “abortion deserts” — areas of the state without clinics — starting in July.