The Democratic Attorneys General Association is taking a huge leap forward in protecting the rights of women across the nation with the announcement that any candidates for attorney general that want to receiving funds from the organization will have to endorse women's rights to abortion and the expansion of access to abortion services.
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This makes it the first national party committee to impose this litmus test.With the federal judiciary being taken over by the Federalist Society and its anti-abortion judges, the fight to protect women's access to reproductive health care increasingly is going to turn to the states. From now on, the candidates the DAGA recruits and assists in campaigns will need to defend the right to choose.
"Attorneys general are on the front lines of the fight for reproductive freedom," Letitia James, the New York attorney general, said in announcing the decision. "They have the power to protect your rights." As more and more Republican legislatures line up to be the one to take down Roe v. Wade, Democratic AGs need to be there to stop them.
"State attorneys general are now on the map as taking the lead when it comes to Democratic values," said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, a co-chair of the association. "We are going to be the ones to be right out in front and hopefully the other committees will follow right along." That's the bar they will have to jump to receive the assistance of the DAGA, but the group is not trying to dictate how they'll respond in their own states. "We trust in our Democratic attorneys general once they are in office to study their own laws and determine what their strategy will be," Rosenblum said. "We're not asking commitments for how they will handle a specific case."
They're specifically trying to make the DAGA look more like America by recruiting more women and people of color. "It's actually increasing the size of the tent," the group's executive director, Sean Rankin, said. "Even in states like Georgia, Texas and Arizona, we've run pro-choice candidates who've done extraordinarily well." Now there will be more of them.