A group of Democratic attorneys general are working to strengthen state-level protections for abortion, contraception and gender-affirming care. These protections could include expanding the use of so-called “shield laws,” which assert that states where abortion or gender-affirming care are legal won’t cooperate with out-of-state efforts to prosecute anyone who helped provide treatment. 

An attorney general is a state’s highest-ranking lawyer, charged with enforcing the state’s laws, representing it in court and bringing civil suits on its behalf. Members of the group — which is open to all Democratic attorneys generals, with 17 attending its first meeting this week — hope to use their authority to introduce reproductive rights hotlines for residents seeking legal support, advocate for legislation that safeguards patients’ reproductive health data and create dedicated “reproductive justice” units within their offices, or teams that could focus on legal questions and lawsuits relevant to reproductive health care.

“People look to Congress, they look to governors. But the attorneys general are on the front lines combating the incessant attacks on our reproductive health care,” said Andrea Campbell, Massachusetts’ attorney general, and chair of the new Reproductive Rights Working Group, which is affiliated with the nonprofit arms of the Democratic Attorneys General Association. “If you don’t have an attorney general that knows what they’re doing and also cares about these issues, you’re in trouble.”

In addition to attorneys general, the working group includes representatives from organizations such as the National Abortion Federation and National Women’s Law Center.

Already, attorneys general have played a major role in shaping access to abortion in their states, and can substantially influence what kind of care is available.

On Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that her office would prosecute a collection of New York-based anti-abortion centers — non-medical facilities that work to dissuade people from seeking abortions, and are also known as “crisis pregnancy centers” — because they allegedly advertised a treatment purported to reverse medication abortions. (There is no evidence suggesting such “abortion pill reversal” actually works.) 

And in April, when the Arizona Supreme Court upheld an 1864 law criminalizing almost all abortions — a ban that was later repealed by legislators but could still temporarily take effect early this summer — Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes said she would not prosecute health care providers who might have been implicated under the law. 

Meanwhile, in Republican-led states such as Idaho, Texas and Alabama, conservative attorneys general have pushed to enforce their states’ abortion bans by limiting people’s ability to travel out of state for care, though their efforts have so far had little legal success. 

In Idaho, Attorney General Raul Labrador circulated a legal opinion last year arguing that the state’s ban also prohibits health care providers from referring patients out of state for abortions, an argument he has since walked back. Texas’ Ken Paxton argued that Texan law prohibited abortion funds from helping people leave the state for abortions, a policy eventually struck down by a federal judge. Just this week, a federal court allowed a case to proceed against Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who had suggested his office would prosecute organizations that help people leave the state for abortions.

The new Democratic group hopes to boost the number of policies that expand access to abortion, or that increase regulation of anti-abortion centers, Campbell said. 

“Every office has different resources and human capital. If we come together across offices in this coalition and working group, we can make sure everyone has what we need as we take on this collective fight,” she said. 

Campbell identified expanding the passage and use of shield laws as one of the coalition’s key goals. These laws have enabled doctors in states such as Massachusetts, California and New York to undercut bans elsewhere by mailing abortion pills to patients in other states.

They rely on a somewhat untested legal strategy — that one state’s laws trump another’s — though their protections only apply to people who are physically in places where a shield law is in effect, and not to people in states with bans. Still, the approach has been so effective that abortion opponents say undermining shield laws is now their top priority.

“We see this as really the kind of most immediate focus that the pro-life movement needs to prioritize,” John Seago, the head of Texas Right to Life, told The 19th in March. “We really think Republicans need to make some moves on this issue quickly before these trends become the status quo.”

His organization has traveled across Texas encouraging county Republican party chapters to adopt platforms that would, in their words, prioritize “stopping abortion pill distributors from sending and trafficking” medication within Texas, the largest state to have banned abortion. At least 20 county chapters have endorsed the measure, which has no legal power but could exert pressure on state lawmakers.