Advocacy
As a feminist health care center, Mabel Wadsworth Center focuses our advocacy goals on efforts that work towards gender and health equity. Using a reproductive justice framework, we strive to be anti-racist and anti-oppression in our advocacy and activism.
Mabel Wadsworth Center opposes any attempt to restrict or block access to abortion care and gender-affirming healthcare while supporting legislation that moves us closer to a world where all of us can access the care we need in the communities we live in by providers we choose and trust.
Coalition and Campaigns:
The Maine Paid Leave Coalition is a group of partners who work together to create comprehensive system change related to paid family and medical leave, and to implement a system that works for all Mainers.
National Legislation:
EACH Act would reverse the Hyde Amendment and related abortion coverage restrictions so that each of us, however much we make, can get affordable, safe abortion care when we need it. Join us! Help lift bans that deny abortion coverage and get one step close to a future where our families thrive and where we make our own decisions about pregnancy and parenting.
The Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) is federal legislation that will protect the right to access abortion care throughout the United States. Equal access to abortion care—everywhere—is essential for social and economic equality, reproductive autonomy, and the right to determine our own lives. Take action.
2023 Maine Legislation:
LD 1619: Act to Improve Maine’s Reproductive Privacy Act
This bill, proposed by Governor Mills with the support of Senate President Jackson and Speaker Talbot Ross will help ensure medical providers can offer the care their patients need, when they need it throughout a pregnancy. Even before the Dobbs ruling, Mainers have had to travel out of state for abortion care because of restrictions in our current law. The changes make it clear that we trust medical professionals to provide care that is in their best judgment. This bill also addresses antiquated data collection policies related to abortion care in Maine, protecting patient privacy and reproductive healthcare providers who perform abortion care. It would remove current language that permits criminalization of providers under certain circumstances and instead would regulate abortion like other safe, legal medical procedures.
LD 1343: An Act to Protect the Reproductive Freedom of Maine People
This bill, sponsored by Bangor Representative Laura Supica, would ensure every Mainer, regardless of what town they live in, has the same rights to abortion care and ensure that no town or municipality can enact any local ordinance in conflict with Maine’s Reproductive Act.
LD 616: An Act to Protect Health Care Professionals Providing Reproductive Health Care
This bill, sponsored by Representative Kuhn, strengthens protections for healthcare providers so that they may offer care to people traveling to Maine for abortion care safely, without threats to their ability to practice medicine. This proposal is consistent with Governor Mills’ 2022 executive order protecting patients traveling to Maine from states with abortion bans to access abortion legally.
LD 935: An Act to remove barriers to Comprehensive Pregnancy Care in Private Insurance
This bill, sponsored by Representative Moonen, aims to expand access to ensure that Mainers who have the right to an abortion under state law can afford the care they need by requiring insurance companies to cover abortion care without cost sharing.
LD 1040: An Act to Require Reimbursement for Gender-affirming Care for MaineCare Members
This bill prohibits the MaineCare program from discriminating in its reimbursement for medically necessary treatment on the basis of a MaineCare member’s gender identity, gender expression or on the basis that the MaineCare member is a transgender individual and requires that the program cover medically necessary treatment for or related to gender dysphoria.
LD 956: An Act Concerning Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Data Collection in Health Care Facilities
This bill requires healthcare facilities to collect data related to sexual orientation and gender identity from an individual as part of the individual’s health care information. The federal uniform data system has included sexual orientation and gender identity data since 2016. This data is part of an individual’s health care information that is confidential under the Maine Revised Statutes, Title 22, section 1711-C.
Come back soon! This page will be updated as the legislative session progresses.