With President-elect Donald Trump and his acolytes likely to enact an anti-abortion agenda across government, a pair of Democratic governors have announced new measures to bolster protections for reproductive freedom in their states.
On Thursday, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) issued an executive order stipulating that state officials will not assist in civil or criminal investigations or proceedings that seek to punish people who provide, obtain, or help others access reproductive health care in the state. (Abortion is legal in North Carolina through the first trimester.)
This is not mere fear-mongering. It’s based on well-founded concerns as anti-abortion Republicans have ramped up efforts to stymie interstate access to abortions. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton is currently suing a provider based in New York for mailing abortion pills to a Texas resident. (New York, unlike North Carolina, has a shield law in place seeking to protect the state’s abortion providers from legal liability for providing care to residents of states where abortion is banned.) And Project 2025 states that under Trump, the Department of Health and Human Services should rescind a rule finalized last year applying HIPAA privacy protections to abortions, in an effort to prevent providers from being forced to hand over that information to facilitate investigations.
“What I am trying to communicate to the people of this state is that they have a champion in me for their personal privacy and their right to make their own health care decisions,” Stein told reporters.
Stein’s executive order also says that pregnant state officials cannot be forced to travel to states with abortion restrictions; that reproductive health facilities in the state must remain protected and accessible; and that state officials must safeguard peoples’ reproductive health data, among other measures.
On Tuesday, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said that his state will begin stockpiling mifepristone, the first pill used in a medication abortion, “so every woman can access this crucial form of reproductive care.” (Abortion is legal without gestational limits in New Jersey.)
Spokespeople for Murphy told the Huffington Post prior to the speech that his administration was gathering a six-month supply of the pills in light of Republicans’ mounting attacks on abortion drugs nationwide. The GOP has sought to classify the pills as controlled substances, despite their well-established safety record. (Republicans were successful in this effort in Louisiana.) Moreover, Project 2025 seeks to restrict the pills from being virtually prescribed and mailed to patients and eventually aims to get the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of these medications revoked entirely. While the Supreme Court last year tossed out a case challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, conservative attorneys general from three states have filed a revised version of the lawsuit that could very well wind up back at the high court.
All this has come as the pills have rapidly gained in popularity since the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Medication abortions now account for more than 60 percent of all abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Research suggests that increase is attributable to a variety of factors, including a rise in virtual providers and shield laws. Other blue states—including California, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Oregon—have also announced plans to stockpile the pills in the face of rising threats to access. And as I reported last year, individual Americans who can afford it also began stockpiling pills in case they need them in the future, a concept known as advance provision.
Trump has been famously inconsistent on his stances on abortion. He told Time magazine in December that it was “very unlikely” the FDA in his administration would limit access to abortion drugs; the same month, he told NBC News that his administration “probably” would not do so, but then added, “Things change.” As my colleague Madison Pauly and I recently chronicled, there are many ways that Trump’s team could restrict access to the pills—including by enforcing the 19th-century Comstock Act.
In his speech, Murphy also called on the New Jersey state legislature to pass a law to eliminate out-of-pocket costs for abortion procedures, which can run an average of about $600 in the first trimester, according to Planned Parenthood.
All this is a reminder that despite the threats Trump 2.0 poses to abortion rights, efforts to resist—and to bolster protections—are alive and well.
