Take Action: Protecting Reproductive Rights Here in MA

ROE Act

Yesterday, in a win for reproductive freedom, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that was designed to close abortion clinics and cut off access to care. This decision affirms that people should not be forced to jump through medically unnecessary hoops to access basic medical care.

But Louisiana isn’t the only state with barriers to care. In Massachusetts, young people seeking abortion are forced to go to court to plead their case to a judge, and families who receive a lethal fetal diagnosis later in pregnancy must travel across the country for abortion care.

That’s why the Massachusetts Legislature needs to pass the ROE Act this session. The ROE Act (S1209/H3320) will make sure that everyone, regardless of income, age, or insurance, can receive necessary abortion care.

Can you email your state legislators today to ask them to priortize the ROE Act?

This is an equity issue. History shows us that wealthy white women have found ways to get abortion care, no matter the barriers.. Women of color, especially Black and brown women, LGBTQ+ people, and people with low incomes, are disproportionately impacted by the political games that corrode abortion access. The Commonwealth can remove harmful barriers to care, support our health care providers, and be a true leader on reproductive freedom by passing the ROE Act. 

Please contact your lawmakers today to ask them to lead Massachusetts forward by passing the ROE Act.

Boston Globe: Is Boston Ready for Michelle Wu?

Milton Valencia, “Michelle Wu says Boston is ready for change. But is Boston ready for Michelle Wu?,” Boston Globe (6/30/20)

“It doesn’t feel to me that people in the traditional power center of the city have noticed the city is changing, not only demographically but ideologically,” said Rachel Poliner, of the Roslindale and West Roxbury chapter of Progressive Massachusetts. (Wu was the only incumbent to get the group’s support.)

In recent candidate forums, Poliner said, members were less focused on neighborhood matters and more driven by big-picture issues: housing, transportation, the environment.

“There are issues that we really need action on,” Poliner said. “And there are processes that we believe we can engage in, in ways the city isn’t.”

New progressive strongholds have sprouted within the city, as well. The city’s highest turnout in 2018, by the percentage of registered voters who cast ballots, was in Wu’s neck of Boston: along the Southwest Corridor that stretches from Jamaica Plain through Roslindale and into West Roxbury, what Larry DiCara, a former councilor and longtime city politics observer, called Boston’s new “lefty strip.”