While the race to fill Justice Kennedy’s Supreme Court seat isn’t over, abortion rights advocates across the country have been organizing to protect abortion access in their states if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Massachusetts advocates were officially successful last week when state lawmakers passed The Negating Archaic Statutes Targeting Young Women Act—aka the NASTY Women Act. The bill, whose name is a callback to Trump’s now infamous remarks during the 2016 presidential campaign to candidate Hillary Clinton, will officially stop a Roe v. Wade reversal from automatically banning abortion in the state.
The bill passed by a landslide in both the state Senate and House. The Senate unanimously voted for it and the House passed it last week in a 138-9 vote. Time reports:
Massachusetts State Senate President Harriette Chandler tells TIME that women in the state legislature have wanted to pass similar legislation for six years, but that Kennedy’s retirement from the Supreme Court hastened the process.
“I think people are beginning to realize these are strange times we live in. Nothing is impossible, and we’ve got to have a ‘plan B.’ If these laws are enforced, what do we do?” Chandler, a Democrat, says. “We’re not willing to sit back and say, ‘Well, it’s not going to happen here.’ The word for that is denial.”
Republican Gov. Charlie Baker will sign it into law next week. The bill attacks a series of restrictions from history, including “laws punishing adultery and fornication; criminalizing abortion and distributing information about abortion; requiring abortions be performed in a hospital; and prohibiting doctors from prescribing contraception to unmarried women.”
