Attorney General Andrea Campbell announced her office will establish a new unit focused on “reproductive justice” after the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The AG’s announcement her office will now include a Reproductive Justice Unit aimed at issues like maternal health and abortion access also came with the introduction of its director, former University of California Los Angeles Sears Clinical Teaching Fellow and ACLU fellow Sapna Khatri.
“This unit will serve as an important tool to ensure Massachusetts continues to lead the way when it comes to accessing the full suite of sexual and reproductive healthcare. That includes, but is definitely not limited to abortion care, maternal health care, gender-affirming care, and preventative care,” Khatri said during a press conference held at Campbell’s Boston offices.
According to the AG, the need for the unit comes as states across the country work to ban or sharply curtail access to abortion within their jurisdiction. Some have made or are considering laws that would make it illegal to leave the state to seek an abortion and punish people who assist a pregnant patient with out-of-state travel or abortion services.
“Right-wing, anti-science extremists will not stop until abortion is banned in all 50 states and LGBTQ people, starting with youth, are pushed to the shadows and frankly possibly out of existence,” she said. “In this unprecedented time we have an opportunity to make sure Massachusetts remains a beacon for reproductive justice.”
After the announcement the U.S. Supreme Court would decide the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization by overturning their 1973 decision in Roe, thus removing federal protections for first-term abortion nationally, Massachusetts passed what the attorney general has described as the strongest reproductive rights legislation in the country.
As a consequence, and perhaps predictably, the state has also seen an uptick in visits by women from the states which have since moved to block access to abortion. According to Rebecca Hart Holder, the President of Reproductive Equity Now Foundation, it’s a concern that now has some science to back it up.
“There has been a 37% increase in the number of people coming to Massachusetts for care” since the Dobbs decision, she told the Herald, citing data from a study recently published by doctors with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
“This cohort study found that after Dobbs, the number of patients traveling to Massachusetts for abortion care at (Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts) increased despite Massachusetts not bordering any state with an abortion ban. We also observed increased use of charitable funding for abortion among out-of-state residents,” the research authors wrote.
