Abortion-friendly policies in Massachusetts may help state officials draw businesses from other states, Governor Charlie Baker said.
As many as 26 states either have or are expected to ban or significantly limit abortion in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision on Friday, June 24, which overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion law to the states.
The governor called it “a big opportunity” for Massachusetts.
“I do believe that having listened to and heard from a lot of companies over the course of the past several days about what this decision means with respect to their workforces and their benefit plans, that there may in fact be a big opportunity here for Massachusetts to encourage some employers to either come here or expand their footprint here, because we are a state that takes this issue seriously and will be there for their employees when they need those kinds of reproductive services and supports,” Baker said during a press conference Monday, June 27.
A reporter asked him if abortion policy is part of normal recruiting of companies to Massachusetts.
“We’ve just been tracking some of the folks who have been commenting on this thing, and I think you can expect that we’ll probably do some reach-out at some point down the road,” Baker said.
On Friday, June 24, the same day the nation’s highest federal court overturned Roe v. Wade, Baker issued an executive order designed to protect abortionists from being arrested in Massachusetts and sent to another state for violating the abortion laws in that state.
The governor made reference to the new abortion executive order when asked by a reporter his reaction to the court’s ruling in Dobbs.
“Well, I said before that when the original draft decision on this came out, that it was deeply concerning. And we obviously spent the time between the time of that draft and the issuance of the ultimate decision coming up with a plan that would keep providers here in Massachusetts safe, and would provide relief to people from other states who came here seeking those services safe as well. And that was why we issued the executive order literally within a matter of hours of the decision itself being issued.”
A reporter asked Baker if he is worried about legal challenges to his executive order.
“This is exactly why we issued that emergency order, and why we spent the previous 30 to 45 days from the time the original decision was leaked, making sure we could put an emergency order in place that could survive legal challenge, which we believe we’ve done,” Baker said.
Another reporter asked the governor if the state plans to provide additional security for abortion clinics in Massachusetts, which he called “women’s health clinics.”
Baker responded: “We’ve had a lot of conversations with the State Police, with the Fusion Center, and with many of the folks in the health care space, about any issues of security or concern there. And I’m obviously not going to speak to what people said about it, because that would be inappropriate. But this is something we’re all paying a lot of attention to and having lots of conversations about it.”
The Commonwealth Fusion Center is an entity of the Massachusetts State Police that tracks threats to public safety, including crime and terrorism.
No attacks on abortions clinics in Massachusetts have been reported.
Baker is not the only governor in recent weeks to suggest that abortion-friendly policies may help lure businesses from other states. California Governor Gavin Newsom and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy have made similar public statements.
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