Throughout her time in workplace, the AG has helped create an abortion authorized hotline for the state, helped implement the state’s abortion supplier protect regulation, and extra.
Shortly after taking workplace final 12 months, Massachusetts Lawyer Common Andrea Pleasure Campbell created a Reproductive Justice Unit that has labored tirelessly to guard and broaden reproductive well being, rights and justice. This Unit has targeted on eliminating disparities in maternal well being, combatting anti-abortion disaster being pregnant facilities, working throughout state traces to answer nationwide assaults on reproductive well being care, and defending and implementing Massachusetts’ robust authorized protections for reproductive rights.
“We’re doing this work with a hands-on and expert-led method,” mentioned AG Campbell, the primary Black girl to carry statewide workplace in Massachusetts. Upon taking workplace, she pledged to “be a nationwide chief in defending reproductive rights and gender affirming care.”
On June 18, AG Campbell and her Reproductive Justice Unit (headed by Sapna Khatri) convened greater than 120 reproductive justice consultants at Western New England Regulation Faculty in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Members included neighborhood organizations, healthcare suppliers, authorized advocates and lecturers. Throughout a listening session, Campbell heard how her workplace may higher champion reproductive justice on an area, state and nationwide stage, significantly with nationwide efforts to roll again these rights.
“As bodily autonomy is beneath relentless assault nationwide, Massachusetts is doubling down on its efforts to champion, defend and broaden entry to sexual and reproductive well being care,” mentioned AG Campbell.
Earlier than the convening, Campbell toured Seven Sisters Midwifery and Neighborhood Birthing Heart in Florence, Massachusetts—the state’s solely midwife-owned and operated impartial delivery heart.
On the convening, Campbell introduced the discharge of 5 new “Know Your Rights” guides targeted on abortion, gender affirming care, contraception, the state protect regulation and anti-abortion clinics.
“To assist make sure that individuals in Massachusetts know their rights within the complicated and evolving post-Dobbs world, I’m glad to launch new sources to assist individuals navigate widespread points related to reproductive care,” mentioned AG Campbell.
As one in all her first actions in workplace, AG Campbell labored with Reproductive Fairness Now to create the Abortion Authorized Hotline—a free and confidential hotline that assists Massachusetts healthcare suppliers and sufferers by offering authorized recommendation associated to abortion entry and care.
The AG has additionally led efforts to totally implement and operationalize the state’s abortion supplier protect regulation, together with Massachusetts’ first-of-its-kind telehealth supplier protect provision, which protects clinicians within the state who serve sufferers residing in states banning abortion. Seven different states have since handed comparable telehealth supplier protect legal guidelines (WA, CO, VT, NY, CA, ME, RI) and 4 practices—Support Entry, Abuzz, The MAP, and Armadillo Clinic—are actually serving over 12,000 ladies residing in ban states every month with telehealth abortion and FDA-approved tablets by mail.
AG Campbell has filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court docket of america to guard entry to treatment abortion and emergency abortion care, fought to defend entry to gender affirming care on behalf of trans youth, and leveraged the instruments of her workplace to handle the maternal well being disaster in Massachusetts. That is evident in her launching and distributing a $1.5 million maternal well being fairness grant. AG Campbell’s predecessor, now-Governor Maura Healey, issued a shopper advisory on anti-abortion disaster being pregnant facilities in July 2022, and the AG has aggressively pursued complaints filed in opposition to these facilities.
The reproductive justice convening concluded with a hearth chat between AG Campbell and the nationally famend reproductive justice activist Loretta J. Ross, now a professor of ladies’s and gender research at Smith School in Northampton, Massachusetts. Campbell and Ross mentioned the historical past of the reproductive justice motion, the state of reproductive care entry at this time and the federal government’s function in sustaining long-term systemic change.
“True reproductive justice is all-encompassing and accounts for liberties resembling the precise to have or not have a toddler, together with the chance to lift kids in environments the place they’ll thrive,” mentioned Ross. “Lawyer Common Campbell is one in all few leaders nationwide to make use of a very complete and expert-based method to championing reproductive justice, and it’s my deep honor to help her on this work.”
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