Kelly Baden on criminalizing essential care at #IWPR Power+ Summit 2024
Kelly Baden (Vice President for Public Policy) warns that states and localities are escalating efforts to criminalize helping patients travel for abortion care, while Alabama’s recent embryo ruling signals a push toward fetal personhood laws.
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Transcript: This year, four states introduced legislation and one passed a law criminalizing adults who help young people leave their state to access legal care somewhere else. That is echoed by the efforts of cities and counties in Texas trying to restrict use of their roads and highways to leave the state to get an abortion care where it is legal. Alabama's attorney general is trying to prosecute anyone who helps support a patient leaving their state to get care where it is legal. And of course, earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a decision that classified frozen embryos as children, which gives us a scary hint as to how they are going to try to enact fetal personhood into law and policy.