Our History

For nearly 50 years our strategy has been to engage in local organizing and local advocacy to create statewide change. In the late 1960s, a group of activists came together to make abortion legal in Massachusetts under the banner of the Massachusetts Organization to Repeal Abortion Laws or MORAL. Incorporated in 1972, MORAL evolved and grew, eventually becoming an affiliate of NARAL Pro-Choice America. In 2021, change came to organization again as our partnership with NARAL Pro-Choice America ended and we became Reproductive Equity Now and the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation.  And in 2023, we began building the nation’s first regional block for abortion access as we expanded our advocacy work to Connecticut and New Hampshire.

What We Do

Our organization’s name, Reproductive Equity Now, reflects the urgency we feel when it comes to demanding, protecting, and expanding abortion access and reproductive equity for everyone. Though we believe that reproductive equity should be guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, what has become abundantly clear is that protecting and expanding abortion access is a state-by-state, voter-by-voter grassroots battle. We need reproductive equity across this country, and we need it now. Reproductive Equity Now will lead that fight in New England as we expand our grassroots presence across the region.

We have seen what happens when we mobilize and organize on the local level. Our organization has been successful in ensuring pro-choice majorities in the Massachusetts State House and State Senate, passing laws that expand access to reproductive health care, and implementing policies to protect patients and providers post-Roe. Central to our work is the belief that every elected official at all levels of government — local, state, and federal — must fight for reproductive equity.

Why Reproductive Equity?

Reproductive equity means equitable access to reproductive health care for all regardless of your race, ethnicity, income, zip code, gender, age, immigration status, ability, sexual orientation, or religion. Today, barriers to accessing care disproportionately impact low-income people and people of color. Even if we remove barriers, inequity persists in accessing reproductive health care. Fighting for equity asks us to examine and fight not just for equal access to care but to give people what they need to access care without delays or financial burden. Centering equity in the fight for reproductive freedom means expanding access until every person can get the care they want, need, and deserve free from any barrier. 

Reproductive equity means using an intersectional lens to fight for access to reproductive health care. Reproductive health care includes access to consent-based sexuality education, birth control, STI testing and treatment, miscarriage management, and the full spectrum of pregnancy care, including abortion care. But the fight for equity means we can't stop there. Not all pregnant people have access to pregnancy care and healthy birth outcomes. And, as long as Black and Brown women face a grave maternal health crisis, we must fight to end it. People cannot make decisions about if, when, and how to become parents if they cannot access affordable child care. And they cannot elect politicians who will fight for reproductive freedom if systems of power erect obstacles that limit their ability to vote. Our goal is to look at the systems that prevent us from achieving equity and dismantle them.

What’s Next?

We must meet this moment of crisis. The anti-abortion movement and right-wing extremists have captured the Supreme Court. But we have the people. 

New England states are leading on issues of equity and reproductive freedom, and we are needed now more than ever. We believe that local organizing and local advocacy result in statewide change. And, we’ve proven it—with policies to expand access to care, protect patients and providers, and make New England a place where people feel safe traveling for compassionate care in a post-Roe world.

The U.S. Supreme Court poses a threat to reproductive freedom across the country. New England can and should be at the forefront of the fight to assert the right of all people to make private, personal decisions about their reproductive destiny. We are creating a regional block of states paving the way forward on reproductive freedom and demonstrating to the nation what true reproductive equity looks like. 

There is a tremendous amount of work to be done to create the world we want to see here in New England. We are poised to lead the way with a model that emphasizes local and state leadership to secure national change. 

Stay tuned to this space and join us!