As Massachusetts lawmakers on Tuesday unequivocally denounced the Supreme Court’s likely decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and vowed to fight to ensure abortion access throughout the country, the budget allocation for reproductive care in the commonwealth’s fiscal 2023 remained an open question.

In the $49.73 billion budget approved by the Massachusetts House last week, representatives voted to earmark $500,000 for reproductive health care access. Some of that funding would be funneled into grants for the Jane Fund of Central Massachusetts, the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts and the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund, according to a consolidated budget amendment.

With the Senate poised to tackle its own budget proposal later this month — which will then need to be reconciled with the House — Senate President Karen Spilka declined to preview what her chamber will unveil.
The budget will be coming out soon, Spilka told MassLive during a Tuesday morning press conference. “It will be coming out I believe next week. At that point, it will be for all to see.”
Her reluctance to provide ballpark dollar figures came after the Ashland Democrat emphasized that a “woman’s right to choose is a woman’s right to choose.”
Spilka and other top Massachusetts elected officials — including House Speaker Ron Mariano, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and U.S. Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark — gathered outside the Massachusetts State House Tuesday morning, following the leaked draft opinion out of the Supreme Court that would topple Roe v. Wade and Parenthood v. Casey.
“I’d be very shocked if it was less,” Mariano said.

“But I do think we have positioned well — we will work with the folks in the field that deal with this day-to-day and see what the ramifications are in this new decision, how it affects the demand” for Planned Parenthood or other organizations, Mariano added.

Spilka wouldn’t say whether the Senate’s budget will align with Mariano’s expectations.

“I think you’ll see next week,” Spilka said.

Massachusetts has enshrined abortion rights into state law under ROE Act, Spilka said in her remarks. But Massachusetts must do more to safeguard women’s rights, said Spilka, who called Tuesday one of the saddest days in U.S. history.

“This is the emergency we all feared. But this is America — this is a clarion call for us to take action,” Spilka said. “In America, we all have a voice. We will not be silent. We will not go quietly. We will not go into a devastating future that seeks to treat us as second-class citizens.”

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Original story HERE.