Democratic governors in 20 states are forming a coalition aimed at addressing ways to expand and protect abortion access in the country as a growing number of Republican-led states adopt abortion restrictions following the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade, giving states the power to determine limits on terminating a pregnancy.
Governors of New Mexico, California, North Carolina, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Michigan, among others, announced Tuesday the launch of the Reproductive Freedom Alliance that will establish a network for state executives to collaborate on their efforts to strengthen abortion rights, such as administrative actions, proposed state legislation, and budgetary actions.
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“As governors representing nearly 170 million people across every region of the country, we are standing with all people who believe in reproductive freedom and health care,” the governors said in a joint statement. “In the face of this unprecedented assault by states hostile to abortion rights and their enablers in the courts, we are pledging to work together to strengthen abortion firewalls across America. This fight isn’t over.“
Some of the coalition’s work will include sharing statutory language that can be modeled in other states to protect abortion providers from facing prosecution for providing abortions to women from out of state, along with methods on how to funnel federal funding toward “reproductive health care,” according to a statement by organizers.
Many of the states involved already have made moves to protect access to abortions, including California, which passed a ballot measure last November to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution. The coalition, which was initiated by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, builds off a similar one that was formed among California, Oregon, and Washington state last year after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision found there was no constitutional right to an abortion.
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The announcement comes as a federal lawsuit by anti-abortion groups seeks to reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, the first of two abortion-inducing drugs used to terminate a pregnancy. More than 40 Republican and Democratic state attorneys general have taken sides in the lawsuit.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who led a coalition of 22 Republican attorneys general in support of the lawsuit, is arguing that the FDA “undermined the public interest” by allowing sweeping access of the abortion medication back in 2000.
