Abortion remains legal in Pennsylvania, but only because of a law passed in 1982 to greatly curb it, the Abortion Control Act. While this Act fulfilled its Constitutional duty of the time by spelling out that abortion was legal, it added an incredible number of restrictions and explicitly tied abortion to crime by placing our abortion laws into the criminal code, Title 18.

A decade later, the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of its restrictions in the landmark Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, holding that restrictions on what they had previously determined to be a Constitutional right were actually acceptable, as long as they did not impose an “undue burden.” After examining each restriction, the only restriction the Court found an “undue burden” was the requirement that women notify their spouses before procuring an abortion. Up until the Dobbs decision, that remained the only restriction that the Supreme Court held to be an “undue burden.” 

Over the next thirty years, Pennsylvania’s innovation sadly became the standard for restricting access to abortion throughout the country, and far too many states followed our lead. By making abortion expensive, inconvenient, and stigmatized, the procedure was already inaccessible in many states prior to the calamitous Dobbs decision in 2022. Even here in Pennsylvania, touted as a haven, we only have twenty operational clinics in a state of nearly 13 million people, the result of an unfairly burdensome and discriminatory legal regime designed to restrict women’s free exercise of their rights. 

With reproductive rights facing a deeply uncertain future nationally, Pennsylvania has the opportunity—and the obligation—to again lead by example. We must ensure access to abortion in Pennsylvania is secure, and I will soon reintroduce my bill, the Reproductive Freedom Act (last session’s HB2304), which will repeal the great bulk of the Abortion Control Act and replace it with a new legal framework aimed at treating abortion as health care, to be regulated by professionals instead of ideologically-driven politicians, and placing an emphasis on protecting patients and practitioners.

Please join me in ensuring a more secure future for reproductive rights and help guarantee that all Pennsylvanians – and any of our neighbors seeking care in Pennsylvania – will continue to have the freedom to choose. Let’s bring our rights out from under the shadow of a law passed to deny those same rights. 

Prior co-sponsors of this bill were: VENKAT, KINKEAD, STURLA, KINSEY, SCHLOSSBERG, SHUSTERMAN, DONAHUE, SANCHEZ, HILL-EVANS, PROBST, PIELLI, HOHENSTEIN, O'MARA, SAPPEY, CEPEDA-FREYTIZ, DALEY, KHAN, DELLOSO, CERRATO, BOROWSKI, FLEMING, KRAJEWSKI, MAYES, WAXMAN, ROZZI, ISAACSON, OTTEN, KENYATTA, HANBIDGE, SIEGEL, BRIGGS, T. DAVIS, GREEN and POWELL

Statutes/Laws affected:
Printer's No. 0007: 18-32, P.L.457, No.112