<\/p>\nAdd Preferred Source<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\u201cToday, our Commonwealth Court, looking at the Pennsylvania constitution, held that there is a right to reproductive autonomy, and it\u2019s the highest possible level of a right,\u201d said Susan Frietsche, executive director of the Women’s Law Project, which helped represent the clinics.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Attorney General David Sunday, a Republican, said the office was reviewing the decision and did not say whether it would appeal.<\/p>\n
Democrats roundly praised the decision, as did abortion rights advocates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve long opposed this unconstitutional ban, and as Governor, I did not defend it \u2014 because a woman\u2019s ability to access reproductive care should never be determined by her income,\u201d Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The likely Republican nominee to challenge Shapiro in the fall general election, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, said in a statement that the court’s decision \u201cto force our tax dollars to pay for abortions is not only misguided, it is immoral.\u201d<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
In 2019, plaintiffs asked the court to order the state\u2019s Medicaid program to begin covering abortions, without restriction, arguing that a 1982 Pennsylvania law restricting state Medicaid funding violated the constitutional equal protection rights of low-income women.<\/p>\n
The case has since taken several turns, with a lower-court ruling in 2021 that the plaintiffs did not have standing and also saying that they were bound by a state Supreme Court 1985 decision upholding the 1982 law.<\/p>\n
However, in 2024, the state Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s ruling and also determined that previous court decisions did not fully consider the breadth of state constitutional protections against discrimination beyond those provided by the federal constitution.<\/p>\n
The seven judges on the lower court who heard the case largely sided with the plaintiffs on Monday. The majority opinion said the state should invest in maternal and infant health care and other resources if it believes that women should carry a pregnancy to term.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The attorney general’s office had argued that the state had an interest in \u201cprotecting fetal life\u201d and that the Medicaid coverage exclusion helped support that goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the state believes certain medical procedures may psychologically harm women, the state can license, regulate, and educate around such care. That is less intrusive than taking an entire medical procedure off the table categorically for some women, some of whom may benefit from that procedure \u2014 a fact the Attorney General does not dispute,” the majority opinion said.<\/p>\n
Abortion opponents quickly criticized Monday’s decision.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cBy declaring a sweeping constitutional \u2018right to reproductive autonomy\u2019 and mandating taxpayer-funded abortion through Medicaid, the court has overstepped its authority, ignored the plain text of our state constitution, and forced millions of Pennsylvanians who believe life begins at conception to subsidize the killing of unborn children,” said Michael Geer, president of Pennsylvania Family Institute, which opposes abortion rights.<\/p>\n
In Pennsylvania, abortion is legal under state law through 23 weeks of pregnancy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILE – The Pennsylvania Judicial Center, home to the Commonwealth Court, is seen Feb. 21, 2023, in Harrisburg,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[76947,76941,33,76940,25404,25405,28,30,29,25396,25399,25402,29742,76948,8060,76939],"class_list":{"0":"post-171448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-abortion-medicaid-constitution","9":"tag-david-sunday","10":"tag-josh-shapiro","11":"tag-michael-geer","12":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","13":"tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","16":"tag-pennsylvania-news","17":"tag-product-30097-ap-pennsylvania-state-news-no-weather","18":"tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","19":"tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","20":"tag-product-32520-ap-online-other-u-s-government-news","21":"tag-product-32538-ap-online-health-and-medical-news","22":"tag-stacy-garrity","23":"tag-susan-frietsche"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}