Purpose

The purpose of this post is to track some ongoing initiatives meant to reduce access to abortion in Massachusetts. I will lay out the background, the intent, the counterargument, and the calls to action. (Feel free to skip to the end if you know what you want to do.)

Background

As a reminder, “Dobbs” refers to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the SCOTUS ruling which passed abortion rights back to the states. The precedent it overturned was Roe v. Wade, which asserted that a “right to privacy” existed which prevented the government from prohibiting a woman from seeking an abortion within the first trimester of pregnancy for any reason.

Famously, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of this decision, stated that the decision behind Roe v. Wade fit the abortion discussion poorly. However, her dissent after the fact is often misconstrued by opponents of the ruling. She believed that the ruling was overly broad for the topic of abortion, and dealt with doctors’ rights, not women’s rights.

Intent

Passing abortion to the states can logically only be a stepping stone to making it federally illegal; anti-abortion efforts will not stop there. Pro-life advocates believe that abortion is murder. Passing the issue to the states is an intermediary effort to ban it federally everywhere. Stripping the choice from 350 million people and handing it to 50 individual state governments is an affront to personal liberty.

Counterargument

The argument as given by Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL) in favor of the pro-life cause is In recognition of the fact that each human life is a continuum from conception to natural death, the mission of Massachusetts Citizens for Life is to restore respect for human life and to defend the right to life of all human beings, born and preborn.

In reality, this is a “big government” stance which aims to leverage the federal government to enforce personal beliefs about others’ bodies. The same “right to life” that MCFL touts as its guiding principle serves as the argument against it: the government ought not have the power to say how our bodies are used. We do not even force prisoners to donate blood or organs because of a fundamental right to bodily autonomy that is dangerous for governments to cross (note the source). People who have violated the law and whom we have deprived of freedom of movement for our collective good still have a recognized right to bodily autonomy in America, which incarcerates its citizens at a rate that outpaces most of the world.

Whether one believes the unborn are full-fledged humans or pre-human is irrelevant to the conversation, even though it often takes the forefront of the debate; just as the government cannot compel someone to donate blood–even to save a life–even if the life to be saved is in need of saving because of the person who can donate blood–the government ought not compel a woman to continue donating her body, even if to not do so terminates a life. Whether the unborn has the same rights is personal opinion, but even if we assume it has full equal rights, equal rights do not entitle any person to any other person’s body in any other circumstance. Therefore, the efforts of the MCFL serve to weaken the rights of everybody (but particularly women) for a moral battle they have always had the liberty to choose for themselves.

Calls to action

The MCFL has a legislation page which has bills “for” and “against”. I encourage users to discard the headers the site owners used. Here are some outliers:

• H.1991 pertains to whether minors need parental approval to get an abortion.
• S.1579 expands abortion access.

Here are the politicians voting and their contact info:

• Cindy Creem (MA Senate): Cynthia.Creem@masenate.gov
• Amy Sangiolo (MA House of Representatives): Amy.Sangiolo@mahouse.gov