Massive protests in US to protect abortion rights

WASHINGTON, May 22 (New York Times): A district attorney in Utah is refusing to enforce a new law banning abortions after 18 weeks. In Colorado, the secretary of state is barring her staff from taking work-related trips to Alabama, a protest against that state's decision last week to set the strictest abortion limits in the country.

And in Vermont, Democrats have approved a measure meant to protect abortion rights, and supporters have pleaded with the state's Republican governor, Phil Scott, to sign it.

The Vermont bill, aimed at providing some of the strongest protections for abortion rights in the nation, came as crowds of supporters for such rights gathered Tuesday outside statehouses and on the steps of the Supreme Court to protest abortion bans like Alabama's.

In Vermont, the bill would prohibit the government from interfering in any way with the right to have an abortion. It would not change the status quo in Vermont, where there are no legal limits on when or under what circumstances a woman can decide to end a pregnancy.

But supporters say that the bill sends a resonant message to the nation about Vermont's views on abortion rights just as other states are sending far different signals.

As conservatives in states like Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri race to pass some of the strictest limits on abortions in decades, a pushback is developing as well. In Democratic-held or Democratic-leaning states, abortion rights supporters who are alarmed by the new laws and by the threat represented by a more conservative Supreme Court are trying to repeal abortion restrictions or limit the government's say over women's reproductive decisions.