Wes Moore, the former CEO of Robin Hood, is considered a rising star in the Democratic party
(Bloomberg) — Maryland Governor Wes Moore, a rising star in the Democratic party, says abortion access is an economic issue. “Reproductive freedom and family planning is actually an important component to economic growth and an economic agenda as well,” he said this week in an interview with Bloomberg News. “I actually don’t separate how we look at those issues. I think they’re all actually intertwined.”Moore, 44, won office in November to become the first Black governor of Maryland. The political newcomer is a Rhodes Scholar who served in combat in Afghanistan, and is the former chief executive officer of the Robin Hood Foundation, an organization that fights poverty in New York City and is backed by many on Wall Street. The Maryland governor has made reproductive rights a centerpiece of his strategy. In his first week in office, Moore said he was releasing $3.5 million in state funding to expand abortion training. His predecessor, Larry Hogan, a Republican, had withheld the funds last year.The Maryland House voted this month to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. The measure is sponsored by House Speaker Adrienne Jones, a Democrat. If it passes the general assembly, Marylanders will have the chance to vote on the change in November 2024.
“It is something that I support, it’s something that I’m going to make sure that I’m using my voice on and using my bully pulpit on, and I do believe that if it goes out to voters, the voters are going to align with both myself and the speaker of the House on this,” he said.
It’s a strategy that has worked in other states. In the midterms, voters overwhelmingly favored abortion rights when given a choice — even in Republican strongholds like Kentucky.
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The ability to access safe abortions is what keeps many American women from falling into poverty, decades of research shows. The University of California at San Francisco’s landmark Turnaway study, which tracked nearly 1,000 women who sought abortions from 2008 to 2010, found that those denied abortions experienced markedly higher levels of financial distress—including debt delinquency, personal bankruptcy and eviction—compared with those who were able to terminate their pregnancies.Moore recently joined his counterparts in a coalition of 20 states focused on shoring up reproductive health-care access. The group includes Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and California Governor Gavin Newsom. Earlier this month, Moore, Newsom and Whitmer were among a group of lawmakers calling on pharmacy operators to clarify their policies on stocking, prescribing and distributing mifepristone, a pill that’s commonly taken to induce abortions.
The right to abortion is already protected in Maryland law. A constitutional amendment would go further in protecting reproductive health care if any future restrictions were put into place by the state legislature, which leans heavily Democratic. State officials have proposed other legislation to prepare for a potential surge in patients as other states enact restrictions.
“We’ll continue to make sure we’re protecting reproductive rights,” Moore said. “As long as I’m governor, that is gonna be a reality in the state of Maryland.”
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