This past year has been a critical one in
the fight for reproductive freedom. For decades, politicians who want to
interfere with people’s personal decisions about pregnancy have worked to push
abortion care out of reach. They’ve quietly passed 483 state abortion
restrictions since 2011 — including 59 new restrictions passed in 2019 alone.
And after Trump was able to put two new justices who are hostile to abortion
rights on the Supreme Court, politicians decided to go for broke.
Since Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation,
seven states have passed laws banning abortion from the earliest days of
pregnancy, all of which have now been blocked. The ACLU has challenged five of
the new early bans, stopping these laws from going into effect in Alabama,
Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio. Because of our work alongside our
partners, abortion is still legal in all 50 states.
The threat to abortion access is real,
and with such a volume of anti-abortion laws being passed, it can be hard to
stay hopeful. But even as we saw extreme attacks throughout the South and
Midwest, 2019 was also a banner year for historic wins.
In seven states, legislators passed eight
bills to protect and expand access to abortion care. New York and Illinois
passed Reproductive Health Acts, laws recognize the right to prevent, end, or
continue a pregnancy as fundamental; treat abortion as health care rather than
a crime; authorize nurse practitioners and other advance practice clinicians to
provide abortion care; and remove outdated abortion restrictions from their
books.
This victory was especially important in
Illinois, which is surrounded by states that are hostile to abortion rights and
already serves as a refuge for those who cannot obtain care — like in
neighboring Missouri, where the last abortion clinic hangs by a thread.
Vermont and Rhode Island also acted to
ensure that the right to make decisions regarding pregnancy will remain
protected in their states, regardless of what the Supreme Court might do to Roe v. Wade. And Nevada, whose voters
had already ratified abortion rights at the ballot in the 1990s, repealed a law
that put people at risk of prosecution for ending a pregnancy on their own and
updated its informed consent law to be aligned with the current standard of
care.
In California, a coalition of student
organizers from across the state led the campaign to pass a first-in-the-nation
law to guarantee access to abortion pills on state college campuses and
universities at student health centers. More than half of all students in University
of California and California State Universities are low income, and students of
color, low-income students, first-generation college students, and students who
are already parents or supporting their families are particularly harmed by
barriers to accessing comprehensive reproductive care. This move ensures that
thousands of students can get timely and affordable access to abortion care on
campus when they need it.
Maine enacted two new laws. The first
allowed qualified, non-physician health care professionals to provide abortion
care, increasing the number of publicly-accessible health centers where someone
could get an in-clinic abortion procedure from 3 to up to 18 locations. The
second guaranteed that abortion will be covered in public and private health
care plans, ensuring that people don’t have to choose between paying their
bills and getting the abortion care they need.
We haven’t seen such robust protections
enacted since the early 1990s — the last time people feared that the Supreme
Court might overturn Roe. Recognizing
the unique moment in which we found ourselves, ACLU staff at national and state
offices worked to help secure these wins and channel fear and anger into
action, whether by providing testimony and expert analysis, collaborating with
coalition partners and lawmakers to successfully fend off attacks, or
mobilizing constituent support.
The threat to abortion rights has by no
means passed and the work isn’t over. We know that states passed these abortion
bans in the hopes that the Supreme Court will take up one of the cases
challenging them and rule to overturn or further dismantle Roe. And we know that more states are lining up to join them by
passing additional bans when their legislatures reconvene in January.
Abortion opponents never rest, but neither do we. We will continue to prepare for and combat the worst effects of the Trump era while working to build a world in which all people can make the reproductive decisions that are best for them and can obtain the care they need.
Part of an end of year wrap-up series. Read more:
Under Attack by Trump, Immigrant Justice is Advancing in the States
In 2019, We Fought Across the Country to Dismantle Mass Incarceration. We Won on Multiple Fronts.