Abortion Access for Federal Employees

We’ll send updates on a range of issues soon.  In the meantime, we want to share the attached letter that we sent to the White House, Attorney General, and other Administration officials today.  It offers proposals for how the government can help protect abortion access for the two million federal employees and their dependents in states that ban abortion or likely will soon (Kansas is NOT included!).

As you’ve probably seen, the Administration has taken several important steps in recent weeks.  It’s issued two Executive Orders (available here and here), sued Idaho over its near-total abortion ban, and formed numerous tasks forces—including the DOJ Reproductive Rights Task Force, which met with DOJ GEN last month.  Now, it’s time to extend those efforts to the federal workforce.  This letter outlines six concrete actions that the Administration can and should take without delay.

I want to thank the members of DOJ GEN’s incredible Abortion Access Working Group for their ideas and work on this letter, and in particular, Jen Swedish.  The working group’s been meeting regularly, and we’ve consulted with experts from national nonprofits, unions and legislative offices.  The group has several projects in the works and is still taking new members—just shout if you’d like to join.  Also, please check out our new webpage that the working group created, which provides links to terrific resources on abortion access.  More on that in the next updates email.

We’ll let you know if we hear back from the Administration.