In a seven to zero unanimous vote, Pittsburgh’s City Council has approved legislation to ensure abortion rights. “Pittsburgh is truly out in front of the pack by adopting these bills,” says interim Co-Executive Director of the Women’s Law Project Sue Frietsche.
The three bills were sponsored by Councilmembers Bobby Wilson and Erika Strassburger, and former Councilmember Corey O’Connor. Frietsche and WLP board member attorney Greer Donley testified in support of the legislation and offered feedback on early drafts. The proactive package features three bills.
The first bill seeks to shield abortion providers in Pittsburgh from out-of-state investigations or prosecutions regarding healthcare they may provide to out-of-state patients. Such efforts are critical as some states that banned abortion are threatening to reach beyond their borders to punish residents who travel to find abortion and related reproductive healthcare they have been unjustly deprived of in their home state.
“I have doctors calling me saying, ‘Am I going to go to jail for practicing legal medicine under the laws of our state?’ That cannot happen in this city,” Frietsche, recently told PublicSourcePA.
Abortion is still legal in Pennsylvania, but anti-abortion state lawmakers are aggressively moving to try to ban abortion in Pennsylvania as early as next year. (Our fact sheet on the No Right to Abortion constitutional amendment SB106 is available here.)
The second provision in the Pittsburgh legislative package lays a foundation in case they are successful. If abortion is banned in Pennsylvania, this bill would direct law enforcement officials to deprioritize abortion-related crimes. Pennsylvania township Radnor recently passed a similar provision.
The third element seeks to hold crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), anti-abortion organizations repeatedly found to spread false and misleading information about abortion and contraception, accountable for spreading medical misinformation.
Designed to Deceive, the national CPC accountability report we published with our partners in the Alliance, found that 65% of CPCs in Pennsylvania promote false and misleading information, and 32% provide or promote “abortion pill reversal,” a fake medical “treatment” that medical experts have called “unproven,” “experimental,” and “not based on science.”
You can download a fact sheet on CPCs in Pennsylvania here and a fact sheet on Abortion Pill Reversal here.
Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond. As a non-profit organization, we can not do this work without you. Please consider supporting our work.
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