Protecting Reproductive Freedom & Women’s Health

I believe every woman deserves the freedom to make her own reproductive health decisions—and access to high-quality health care regardless of her income, race or ZIP code.

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That belief is reflected throughout my record. I have voted to protect reproductive freedom in Maryland’s Constitution, protect abortion patients and providers, safeguard reproductive health information, fund abortion and family planning services, and support women who choose to continue their pregnancies.

 

My Record on Reproductive Freedom

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I Voted Twice to Protect Reproductive Freedom in Maryland’s Constitution

I voted twice to establish reproductive freedom as a fundamental right in Maryland—first in 2022 and again in 2023, when I co-sponsored HB 705, the Right to Reproductive Freedom constitutional amendment.

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Maryland voters ultimately approved that constitutional protection in 2024.

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I Voted to Protect Patients and Providers After Dobbs

I voted for the Reproductive Health Protection Act (2023) SB859, strengthening Maryland’s protections for patients and health care providers against certain investigations and legal actions originating in states that restrict reproductive health care.

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Maryland should remain a place where patients can obtain reproductive health care that is legal here without fear that another state will reach across our borders to punish them or their providers.

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I Voted to Protect Reproductive Health Information

I voted for HB 812 (2023) to strengthen protections for sensitive information associated with legally protected reproductive health services.

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Privacy is fundamental to reproductive freedom. Decisions about reproductive health care belong to patients—not politicians in other states.

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I Voted to Make Nearly $20 Million Available for Abortion Care

In 2025, I voted for SB 848, the Public Health Abortion Grant Program, establishing a program to improve access to abortion care and making approximately $19 million in accumulated funds available for that purpose.

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The measure passed the Maryland Senate without a single Republican vote.

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Protecting a legal right also means making sure people can actually access it.

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I Consistently Vote to Fund Family Planning and Planned Parenthood

Every year, I vote for state budgets that support family planning services, including providers like Planned Parenthood. Republican legislators have repeatedly sought to remove public funding for these services, and I vote to preserve it.

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That funding matters. Without public support, the greatest barriers to care fall on women who cannot simply pay out of pocket—disproportionately low-income, Black and Brown women.

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I Sponsored and Passed the Pregnant & Parenting Student Support Act

This one is personal.​ I became pregnant while I was in college. I know firsthand that choosing to have a child should not mean having to choose between motherhood and an education.

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That experience helped inspire my Pregnant & Parenting Student Support Act, SB 511 (2025). I sponsored and passed the legislation to help pregnant and parenting students remain in school and connect them with resources and support.

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Importantly, my legislation also preserved access to abortion-care information and support. That balance mattered. The Women’s Law Center of Maryland supported my legislation, while Maryland Right to Life opposed it.

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To me, reproductive freedom means supporting women in whatever choice they make.

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Why I Voted No on HB 937

My vote against HB 937, the 2022 Abortion Care Access Act, was not a vote on whether abortion should be legal. Abortion was already protected under Maryland law.

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My concern was with a specific policy change in HB 937: who could perform abortions and what safeguards accompanied that expansion.

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Before HB 937, Maryland law provided:

“An abortion must be performed by a licensed physician.”

HB 937 replaced that language with:

“An abortion must be performed by a qualified provider.”

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HB 937 changed Maryland law to allow non-physicians to perform abortions. I do not believe Maryland included sufficient safeguards when making that change.

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California Shows There Was Another Way

California is an important comparison because it also expanded abortion care beyond physicians—but its legislature drew specific lines around that authority.

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California law expressly authorizes appropriately qualified non-physician providers to perform abortions “by medication or aspiration techniques in the first trimester of pregnancy.”

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California also requires specified training and demonstrated clinical competency for certain non-physician providers performing aspiration abortions and expressly limits that authority beyond the first trimester.

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Maryland’s HB 937 did not include comparable procedure-specific or first-trimester limitations in the abortion statute. Instead, Maryland relies on the provider’s underlying professional scope of practice. That distinction mattered to me.

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My objection was never to medication abortion. It was never to abortion access. My concern was that Maryland removed the physician requirement without putting the kinds of procedure-specific and gestational safeguards into the law that another strongly pro-choice state like California had adopted.

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Why Health Disparities Mattered to My Decision

I could not consider that policy change without considering the health care system in which Black women already receive care. Nationally, Black women have a maternal mortality rate more than three times that of White women. Those disparities are real. And when our health care system creates different levels of access or quality, Black women and low-income women too often get the short end of the stick.

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That raised a serious question for me: Were we creating the possibility of a two-tiered system in which women with greater resources continued receiving care from physicians while other women disproportionately received care from non-physician providers?

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If Maryland was going to make such a significant change, I also believed we should track its impact and determine whether disparities emerged. HB 937 did not require that kind of disparity tracking. I was not willing to simply assume there would be no unintended consequences for women already experiencing profound disparities in our health care system.

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I Could Have Abstained. I Chose to Register My Dissent.

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Nevertheless, My Record on Reproductive Choice Is Clear

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• I have voted to make reproductive freedom a constitutional right in Maryland.

• I have voted to protect abortion patients and providers.

• I have voted to protect reproductive health information.

• I have voted to make nearly $20 million available to expand abortion care.

• I consistently vote to publicly fund family planning services, including Planned Parenthood.

• And drawing from my own experience, I sponsored and passed legislation supporting pregnant and parenting students while preserving access to abortion-care information and support.

• I support a woman’s right to choose. I also believe every woman deserves high-quality health care.

• For me, those principles are not in conflict.

• Women deserve both choice and quality care. We should never have to choose between the two.