Baltimore Women’s March advocates enshrining reproductive rights in state constitution
By Hannah Gaskill | [email protected]
UPDATED: September 20, 2024 at 11:32 a.m.
More than 100 women gathered in the backroom at Checkerspot brewery Wednesday evening with three goals: to elect Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Angela Alsobrooks; to make Vice President Kamala Harris the first female president; and to enshrine reproductive rights into the state constitution.
At the Baltimore Women’s March in Pigtown, state Sen. Mary Washington, Comptroller Brooke Lierman, City Councilwoman Odette Ramos, Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, Freedom of Reproduction Maryland Chair Erin Bradley, and Alsobrooks campaign senior adviser Yvette Lewis implored Baltimoreans from elementary school age to the elderly to campaign on access to birth control, abortion services and healthy pregnancies.
During the general election, Marylanders statewide will vote on Question 1, which would amend the state constitution to guarantee “every person … the fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including the ability to “prevent, continue or end one’s own pregnancy” without state interference.
While the word “abortion” is not in the question, its protection is implied under the right to end a pregnancy.
In 1991, the General Assembly enacted legislation allowing abortions to be performed in Maryland until a fetus reaches viability, considered to be at about 24 weeks. After that, patients can receive abortion care only to protect their health or if there’s a fetal anomaly. This law was codified through a 1992 ballot referendum, so it is protected through statute.
This year’s ballot question was the Maryland General Assembly’s response to the decision in the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned 50 years of precedent established in the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade.
Bradley said Wednesday that she is often asked why the 2024 ballot question is necessary if abortion access in Maryland is statutorily protected. Her response: “Roe was established law, too, right?”
“The opportunity to codify it in the constitution means that it takes someone galvanizing all you good people and all the voters of Maryland to prohibit abortion,” Bradley said. “That’s a big lift.”
Lierman said women’s bodies are “on the line” during the election this November, mentioning Candi Miller and Amber Thurman, two Black Georgia women who recently died due to a lack of access to reproductive health care.
McDonald-Mosley, an OB-GYN who provides abortion services, said she has seen patients come from as far as Texas and Florida for care. They travel by airplane — sometimes for the first time in their lives. They stay in hotels or with family. They find people to watch their kids. They take off work to travel.
“All of this for a simple procedure that typically takes about five minutes,” McDonald-Mosley said. “I can’t believe that this is where we are.”
Quoting the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Washington said:
“A woman’s right to choose is something central to women’s life, to her dignity; and when the government controls that decision for her, she’s been treated as less than a full adult human being responsible for her own choices.”
“Not here in Maryland,” Washington said.