“Some [states] have recently enacted laws allowing abortion, with few restrictions, at all stages of pregnancy.”

Regrettably, we have come to expect such misleading rhetoric in political debate.

That false characterization was made of Maryland’s law during floor debate in Annapolis.

One does not expect to see it in a draft opinion written by an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the  United States.

But this is a draft opinion joined by jurists who misled the U.S. Senate and the American public when they testified under oath about their position on Roe v. Wade.

The Alito draft declares that abortion is “fundamentally different…from the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception and marriage.”

No litigator or legislator should rely upon that statement.

The U.S. Senate will vote next week on a bill to enact the holding of Roe v. Wade.

Everybody involved knows that the bill won’t pass.  It will put 100 senators on record on the issue.

The pro-life movement is already strategizing about federal legislation to ban abortions.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ban-roe-supreme-court-mississippi/

They should not be underestimated.

What should we do in Maryland?

If a resident of Texas comes here to have an abortion, the recently enacted Texas law authorizes a private individual to sue the health care providers in a Maryland court.

Connecticut has passed a law prohibiting such actions in its courts.

I will be working with the drafters of that bill on a Maryland version.

Protecting a woman’s right to choose is no longer a “settled issue,” as some have characterized it.

Candidates for governor and the General Assembly must speak to how we should respond to the decision that the Supreme Court will hand down in June.