Republican-controlled states are sealing the cracks in their anti-abortion regimes through legislation that removes the power of, or seeks to punish, Democratic prosecutors who decline to charge people for abortion-related crimes.
Most of the legislation proposed echoes a law enacted in Idaho last April, which gives the attorney general authority to prosecute violations of the state’s abortion ban, should the local prosecuting attorney decline to do so. These state-level actions, both proposed and enacted, are collected in a new report, shared with TPM, on the preemption of local prosecutors by the Local Solutions Support Center and Public Rights Project.
“In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, abortion has been a central focus of efforts to preempt local prosecutors,” the report said. “In many states, conservative state l