Maryland was certainly one of 10 states that had measures to guard abortion entry on the poll through the presidential election, and certainly one of seven to move it. However what does it imply when states act to protect abortion entry whereas the nation returns to the White Home, Donald Trump, who has beforehand boasted about appointing the U.S. Supreme Court docket justices who had been instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade in 2021?
“It’s a conundrum,” mentioned Robyn Elliott, a managing associate at Public Coverage Companions in Annapolis. “I think when we, as a public, think about abortion and reproductive health, that we often frame it as a right. The challenge that we are going to be facing almost immediately is that … rights do not equate to access.”
Questions swirl about whether or not a brand new Trump administration will block abortion care, particularly in states like Maryland which have enshrined entry. Many are turning their eyes to Undertaking 2025, which is a presidential transition venture created by the Heritage Basis for conservative administrations.
“The top line: It is about using federal authority in any manner possible to restrict access to reproductive health services, so anything from potentially defunding Medicaid programs to rolling back some of the protections that we currently have through either federal law or, in some cases, regulation,” mentioned Elliott.
‘The fight is not over’
Undertaking 2025, from which Trump distanced himself through the marketing campaign, states that “Abortion and euthanasia are not health care,” and that the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention shouldn’t put it up for sale as such.
Amongst many anti-abortion measures beneath Undertaking 2025, it recommends that the CDC fund research into the dangers abortion might pose, and means that the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers lower funding from states like Maryland that don’t take part in abortion knowledge assortment. The information assortment contains what number of abortions happen, at what gestational interval and for what purpose — together with spontaneous miscarriage. It additionally requires the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration, FDA, to reverse the approval of abortion medicines like mifepristone and the implementation of the 1873 Comstock Act to ban abortion tablets from being despatched by means of the mail.
The Victorian-era Comstock Act is a legislation that prohibits sending lewd or lascivious materials, like pornography, or any materials supposed for producing abortions, just like the drug mifepristone, by means of the mail. It’s not usually adhered to within the modern-day, however Elliott questions how it is going to be interpreted beneath a brand new Trump administration.
Based on the Guttmacher Institute, a analysis nonprofit that goals to advance sexual and reproductive well being and rights, medicine abortions account for greater than half of U.S. abortions.
Mifepristone’s FDA approval was lately challenged within the federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court docket preserved entry to the drug earlier this yr, deciding that the plaintiffs within the case lacked the authorized proper or standing to sue.
Forward of the Supreme Court docket’s ruling, Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, made efforts to stockpile Mifepristone.
“We will see other attempts to test whether or not the Comstock law can be applied in today’s world,” Elliott warned.
Nonetheless, many are celebrating enshrining entry to reproductive freedom within the state structure whereas acknowledging the challenges forward.
“While this week marked an enormous victory in our work to protect a woman’s right to choose, our fight is not done,” Moore posted on X.com. “The mission continues to keep Maryland a safe haven for abortion access, deliver critical supports centered on protecting bodily autonomy, and provide Marylanders with the resources they need to make their own, informed decisions about family planning and health care.”
Home Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, a Baltimore County Democrat who sponsored the laws creating the poll query, thanked everybody who voted in its favor.
“But the fight is not over!” she posted on X. “It won’t be until EVERY woman in EVERY state has the same access to the reproductive care they need to stay healthy & safe.”
How Maryland has tried to guard abortion entry
Tuesday’s passage of the measure to enshrine entry to abortion care within the state Structure isn’t Maryland’s first try at defending entry.
In 1991, Maryland lawmakers handed a invoice barring the state from interfering with abortion entry till a fetus reaches viability, which happens round 24 weeks. After that time, abortions can solely be carried out if there’s a fetal anomaly or the pregnant particular person’s life is in danger. That measure was codified by means of a statewide poll referendum in 1992.
In 2019, former state Home Speaker Michael E. Busch, an Anne Arundel County Democrat, launched a invoice that may have created a poll initiative to enshrine abortion entry within the state structure. Busch withdrew the laws, citing an absence of curiosity that session from former Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller Jr, a Democrat from Calvert County.
“That the people have the right to bodily integrity and privacy to make personal decisions about childbearing and procreation without unwarranted government intrusion,” Busch’s proposed poll measure learn.
In 2019, Busch’s chief of workers Alexandra Hughes mentioned he deliberate to re-introduce the laws the next yr. Busch died simply earlier than the tip of the 2019 legislative session.
In 2022, Jones sponsored laws that may have put the 2024 constitutional modification on that yr’s midterm poll. Her invoice handed out of the Home chamber, however stalled within the Senate.
With the data that the U.S. Supreme Court docket choice that overturned Roe v. Wade was imminent, the Maryland Basic Meeting made extra profitable steps in recent times to make sure that entry to reproductive well being care companies within the state can be expanded somewhat than erased.
In 2022, the legislature handed the Abortion Care Entry Act, which requires the state to earmark $3.5 million in its annual price range for coaching medical professionals, together with nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, doctor assistants and licensed licensed midwives, to offer abortion care. It additionally made Maryland’s current abortion care protection beneath Medicaid everlasting, and mandated that personal medical insurance plans cowl abortion care with out cost-sharing or deductibles, save for these with spiritual or authorized exemptions.
Undertaking 2025 seeks to ban Deliberate Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding.
Elliott mentioned that Maryland pays for abortion care in Medicaid “entirely with state funds.”
“So the legal question that would arise is whether or not the federal government had the legal authority to restrict what Maryland does with its own funding,” she mentioned.
In 2023 — the identical yr the Basic Meeting voted in favor of placing Query 1 on the poll — the legislature handed a invoice requiring affected person consent to ensure that information relating to their reproductive well being care, together with abortion and pharmaceutical shelling out knowledge, to cross state traces through digital well being info exchanges. The Reproductive Well being Safety Act, which prohibits Maryland from aiding different states’ felony investigations of and court docket proceedings in opposition to sufferers and suppliers concerned in abortions, was handed the identical yr.
A giant ‘if’
Although Maryland is nicely set to guard abortion, the state’s greatest menace to entry can be a federal ban.
“All of it goes away, I think, if there’s going to be a federal ban, and that’s a big ‘if’ right now that everybody’s worried about,” mentioned Katie Curran O’Malley, a retired choose and the manager director of the Girls’s Regulation Middle of Maryland. “But is there a will?”
Todd Eberly, a political science professor at St. Mary’s School of Maryland, mentioned that Trump said clearly on the marketing campaign path that he’s not in favor of an all-out ban on abortion entry.
“That would be a pretty big reversal for him to embrace it,” he mentioned.
Whereas the U.S. Senate has secured a Republican majority, the occasion that may lead the Home chamber was nonetheless unclear as of Friday afternoon.
When it comes to Congress passing a federal ban, Eberly mentioned it’s depending on how critical present Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell is about sustaining the filibuster, which permits for extended debate and requires 60 of 100 senators to finish.
“I know that there are pressures on the Republican Party to look at the victory as proof that they can take a harsher stand on abortion,” Eberly mentioned. “You still have the real math problem of, if the filibuster remains, how do you pass it?”
Elliott mentioned that, ought to Congress move a ban that Trump indicators, there can be a “very comprehensive nationwide strategy” to make the most of the courts to protect entry.
Ought to it come to move, Legal professional Basic Anthony Brown mentioned Thursday that the objective of his workplace and like-minded attorneys common can be to problem restrictions or bans in court docket, whether or not they come within the type of criminalizing the help of a pregnant particular person looking for an abortion or stripping funding from states that don’t settle for restrictions.
By the Maryland Protection Act of 2017, Brown has the authority to proceed with civil or felony lawsuits in opposition to the federal authorities primarily based on actions or inactions it takes in opposition to the general public curiosity. He mentioned his workplace is planning to submit a price range request for the 2026 fiscal yr that’s “over the target” to fund his federal litigation unit, and has posted job openings for 5 attorneys and a paralegal to workers the crew.
In his closing years in workplace, Brown’s predecessor, Legal professional Basic Brian Frosh, despatched over 90 letters to former Gov. Larry Hogan informing him of actions he was taking in opposition to the primary Trump administration.
However, even with a ready lawyer common, the affect of a second Trump presidency on abortion entry stays unclear.
“We unfortunately don’t know the outcome of what that litigation would be, just like in any other case, given the way that the courts have been appointed during the past Trump administration,” Elliott mentioned. “So what we’re really looking at, unfortunately, is a question mark.”
Freedom in Copy Maryland supporters had a kickoff rally in January to help the constitutional modification to guard reproductive rights, which handed within the current election. There are questions on whether or not a brand new Trump administration will block abortion care. (Karl Merton Ferron)
