In a very blue-state manner, a reproductive-rights group in deep-red Kentucky is urging Democratic state legislators to introduce a resolution that declares "abortion is health care", and shall be shall be recognized "as an essential component of women's healthcare."
Meanwhile, in Republican-dominated Arizona, State Senator Katie Hobbs plans to help rape victims access emergency contraceptives and introduce a bill that would allow more insurance plans to cover abortions. Similar to the Public Leadership Institute, the measure is another brainchild of the same reproductive-rights group.
The Institute hopes to see introductions of these pro-choice and pro-contraception bills, many of them authored with PLI's help-in 18 states in the coming weeks, according to The Atlantic. Together with another pro-choice group, they are steering themselves against the pro-life federal government. President Donald Trump previously stated that women who get an abortion should be punished and he is expected to appoint a pro-life conservative justice to the Supreme Court soon.
Mirroring their opponents, the pro-choice are looking to the states as a response - who have passed some 300 restrictions on abortion for the past five years in the states.
Founder of the Public Leadership Institute Gloria Totten described that the pro-life opponents are engaging in some incredibly distasteful behavior to try to achieve their means.
"We have to arm progressive policymakers with bills that will help mainstream some of these issues. We are not going to let you cut this service off, and marginalize and villainize (abortion) and the women who decide to have this procedure," she said.
Abortion enemies have long used pre-written bills to enact abortion restrictions in the states by lobby groups, for example in 2015, Arkansas enacted HB 1578 based on Americans United for Life's Women's Right to Know Act. The act requires doctors to describe the probable "anatomical and physiological characteristics of the unborn child," when performing abortions.
