Most states across the country have begun their regular legislative session of 2023. The first since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade when ruling in the Dobbs decision last June.
On Thursday, Maryland's leading lawmakers unveiled a package of bills to further protect and expand reproductive rights.
The state legislature has a Democratic supermajority, and for the first time in eight years, a Democrat in the Governor's mansion.
In other states, the control of the legislature and governor's mansion is likely to determine the legal landscape for abortion laws.
Here's what the landscape looks like right now, based on information from the Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood:
Several states have banned abortion outright, with many having trigger laws passed anticipating an overturning of Roe v. Wade, following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her Trump appointed successor to the Court, Amy Coney Barrett.
Other states have limited it, with South Carolina and Florida attempting to limit abortion despite their state supreme courts ruling that abortion is protected under their states' constitutions.
Around 10 other states also have abortion constitutionally protected.
"Most don't," says Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer at FiveThirtyEight who is tracking abortion-related laws across the country. "The way that states have addressed this in the past was by essentially codify Roe into state law and that's what happened in Maryland."
In the early 1990s Maryland passed a referendum protecting Marylanders right to an abortion in state statute.
Under current Maryland law, the only restrictions on abortion are after viability and the requirement that a parent be notified before a minor gets an abortion. There are some circumstances, including suspected abuse, in which a health professional can waive parental notification.
"Maryland is a good example of a state where lawmakers had already done a lot of work to protect abortion through various state laws. And so we're sort of at a position where, you know, if you ask abortion rights advocates, I think there's always more that states can do to make their state, relatively easy place to get an abortion. But Maryland had already imposed a number of statutory protections, it was already one of the states in the country that was friendlier toward abortion rights. And so I think, you know, in the the menu of options that legislators had in front of them, a constitutional amendment probably seemed appealing because then they're still doing something. A constitutional amendment is one of the strongest protections that they can put into place," says Thomson-DeVeaux
Delegate Ariana Kelly, of Montgomery County, is a co-sponsor of HB705, the legislation that will put the question of constitutional protection to the voters.
"It's very simple," says Kelly of the bill. "It says that individuals have the right to reproductive freedom."
On why it's important, she added, "Marylanders deserve permanent commitment to reproductive freedom and patients and providers deserve to be protected."
Maryland isn't the only state where legislators have introduced bills to add constitutional protections for abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute, as of February 1, Virginia, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Hawaii, Nebraska, Washington and Texas all have bills introduced to add the abortion protections to their state constitutions.
However, some of these states, Texas in particular, are unlikely to pass such protections.
"We're in fairly uncharted territory with what's happening on abortion in the US," says Thomson-DeVeaux.
"Nobody really knew how voters would react. Because abortion just wasn't a very high salience issue. Before the Dobbs decision, people didn't think about it a lot, they kind of thought it was a done deal. They didn't think that there was going to be a change to the status quo. And so politicians are also responding to and what we're seeing in state legislatures is that they're still trying to figure out the political terrain, they're still trying to figure out what voters want them to do, and importantly, what advocates want them to do. And that is a push and pull that we're seeing, especially within the Republican Party, where anti abortion advocates are wanting to take advantage of this moment and continue to impose more strict bans and restrictions. And Republican politicians have to decide how far they want to go," she says.
