I’m taking action against Texas’s reprehensible and blatantly unconstitutional abortion ban. 

 

Yesterday, I led 23 of my AG colleagues in filing an amicus brief in support of the Department of Justice’s challenge to S.B. 8, which bans abortion after six weeks with no exceptions for rape, incest or fatal fetal diagnoses.

 

 

S.B. 8 unleashes bounty-hunting vigilantes to block people’s right to legal, life-saving care. Total strangers can sue anyone who helps someone access an abortion, including providers, patients and their families. This is a dangerous law that’s putting lives at risk.

 

We filed this amicus brief for every single person who is experiencing the devastating impacts of this unconstitutional ban. Their stories are so powerful and heartbreaking – here are a few of them:

 

One patient is desperately trying to scrape together funds to travel out of Texas in secret because she is afraid that her abusive husband will find out.

 

One patient drove 1,000 miles round trip in one day to access an abortion because she doesn’t have paid time off from work and couldn’t afford to lose hours.

 

One patient received the heartbreaking news that the fetus had a terminal anomaly and would not survive after birth. Through her grief, she travelled all the way to Colorado for care so that she wouldn’t have to incur the trauma of carrying the pregnancy to term.

 

We know that this Texas law is just one step in a nationwide campaign to end abortion access in this country for good, but there is a broader agenda at play here, too. Texas is simultaneously enacting sweeping restrictions on the right to vote. 

 

The states that ban abortion are not Republican states. They’re voter suppression states. They’re following the Jim Crow playbook to disenfranchise Black and brown voters – taking away their power to have a say in decisions such as abortion access.

 

Read and share my op-ed with President and CEO of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts Jennifer Childs-Roshak.

 

The ability to preserve and protect everyone’s access to reproductive care rests on their right to vote. Congress must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Freedom to Vote Act and the Women’s Health Protection Act, as well as repeal the discriminatory Hyde Amendment.