Washington, DC — As Saturday marked the one-year anniversary since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democratic AGs have remained on the frontlines of protecting reproductive rights. With abortion access in the hands of the states, Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum and Michigan AG Dana Nessel joined MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss Democratic AGs’ critical role on the issue.

Michigan AG Dana Nessel began by highlighting the Democratic Attorneys General Association’s commitment to supporting candidates who want to protect abortion access. “Let me first say that the Democratic Attorneys General Association [DAGA] is sort of unique in that we are an organization that you can’t even get endorsed by our organization without being a pro-choice candidate or AG. And what we’ve all done together is to fight on this very issue.”

AG Nessel said, “Well, one of the things that we did, in advance even of the Dobbs decision, was to fight against our 1931 Zombie law. That we knew would come back into effect in the event that Roe was overturned, which of course it was. So working together with Governor Whitmer, we were able to ensure that that law stayed and never went into effect. And then we brought a ballot proposal in Michigan that passed in overwhelming numbers that codified Roe into the Michigan constitution to ensure that we now have constitutionally protected reproductive rights not just abortion but birth control, the ability to manage a miscarriage, and fertility treatment as part of our constitution in Michigan. We are protecting rights not just for the folks who live here in Michigan, but anyone who travels here as well.”

When asked about HB 2002 passing in Oregon last week, Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum responded, “This is a grim anniversary of the loss of access to abortion over a great swath of our country and that includes miscarriage care and other types of pregnancy complications. So we knew, even though we had one of the best laws in the country, the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which passed in Oregon, five years ago at least, we needed to do something more. We saw what was coming especially from the East, and when I say East, I mean the state of Idaho, which is just across the border from Oregon. Many of us, in what we call ‘blue states’ have states right next door where there are bans in place or there were trigger laws that immediately triggered a ban. Idaho is one of the worst. So we’ve passed a law, a new law, which actually as of this week, just Wednesday, hasn’t even been signed into law yet, which enhances the Women’s Health Equity Act to ensure that providers, primarily providers, are protected.”

AG Nessel also underscored Democratic AG’s plan to continue to protect mifepristone, the abortion medication: “And that was of course, fighting against the Texas case, which sought to eliminate the FDA’s ability to approve of the manufacture and distribution of mifepristone. And we are continuing to fight. There was a Washington case that was filed by AG Rosenblum and one of our fellow AGs in Washington state. And we’ve had a great deal of success on that. Now ultimately this is going to be decided on by the U.S. Supreme Court. There’s no question about it and it’s the first time where we’re going to see politics interjected into whether or not a drug is deemed to be safe to use. We know that abortion medications are safe to use and they have been for over 20 years. But this is the Supreme Court will be injecting their moral and ethical approval of a drug instead of the safety of a drug.”

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