Welcome to Red Wine & Blue Pennsylvania,

Across the country, states are protecting reproductive rights at the ballot box, but before Pennsylvania can follow this model, we need to expand our lead in the State House and flip the State Senate in November. Then we can work towards protecting access to abortion, birth control and IVF for everyone in Pennsylvania.

Even as other states attack abortion access, our State House passed a bill to protect people traveling to Pennsylvania for reproductive healthcare services and those who provide them in the Commonwealth. Right now this law cannot pass the extremist-controlled State Senate though. 

Currently members in the State House are considering a bill, the Reproductive Freedom Act, to protect abortion access in Pennsylvania. It eliminates the majority of restrictions on abortion care, including the mandated 24-hour waiting period and Medicaid restrictions on abortions. In addition, this bill expands the scope of abortion care providers to include midwives, physician assistants, and certified registered nurse practitioners. This bill, and another bill meant to protect people traveling to Pennsylvania for reproductive care, can only move forward if we keep control of the State House and flip the State Senate in 2024. 

No matter what happens at the state level, we have to keep fighting at the federal level for reproductive freedom. All across the country, extremists are trying to limit our reproductive rights and take away our access to contraception. In fact, 195 Republicans in the U.S. Congress voted against the Right to Contraception. And every Senate Republican except for two, just voted against protecting birth control and IVF, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans support them both. Make no mistake, birth control is on the ballot this November, which is why we have our Save IVF and Birth Control campaign. They’re coming for our rights, so we’re coming for their jobs!

In 2023, Red Wine & Blue worked to get common sense school board candidates elected and oust Moms for Liberty ruled school boards. The voters of Pennsylvania firmly rejected extremist candidates in school districts across the state, but we have more work to do. 

Currently, remaining extremist school boards are working to create policies that are harmful to our children like banning books, calling Pride flags “political speech” and preventing students from using facilities that align with their gender identity. We have to continue to show up at school board meetings and support advocates of public education to protect against these extremist attacks on our local schools. 

In 2023, the Commonwealth Court ruled that Pennsylvania’s current public school funding system is unconstitutional. In May of 2024, the Pennsylvania House passed a bill to significantly improve public school funding in the state budget. The legislation is now in the Senate Education committee, but without Democratic control of the State Senate it is unlikely to move forward. 

The school voucher system is another huge issue in public education funding in Pennsylvania. Since the program started in 2001, more than $2 billion of taxpayer funds have been spent on school vouchers. This money goes to private and religious education institutions that are allowed to discriminate and refuse enrollment to any student for any reason including a disability, race, socio-economic status and sexual orientation or gender identity. And law prohibits even collecting information about who benefits from voucher programs. 

In 2023 we made a lot of progress in protecting public education from an extremist agenda but there is so much more we can do. We are riding this momentum into 2024 and continuing the fight to protect public education for all students. That means showing up at school board meetings, pushing back on book bans, and promoting a safe and inclusive environment for all children in conjunction with our national Freedom to Parent campaign.

Pennsylvania anti-discrimination laws currently do not offer protection to the LGBTQ+ community. Gay and trans Pennsylvanians continue to experience discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations on the basis of who they love or how they express their gender.

Like so many other issues in Pennsylvania, as long as extremists control the State Senate, legislation to protect the LGBTQ+ community will not pass, so we have to do everything we can to flip the State Senate and hold the State House. 

The Pennsylvania House passed  the Fairness Act in 2023, which would extend protections under the state’s anti-discrimination law to LGBTQ+ people. The bill, first introduced more than 20 years earlier, passed the House with a bipartisan 102-98 vote with support from two GOP lawmakers. It has been sitting stagnant in the Senate Government Committee since May of 2023.

4,600 Pennsylvanians are injured or killed by gun violence every year. A common sense gun safety agenda is a priority for our Democratic legislators, who promote laws such as:

• Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs)
• Lost or Stolen Gun Reporting
• Universal Background Checks
• Safe Storage

In fact, the State House passed three pieces of legislation to prevent gun violence, but these bills have been stalled in the Senate. These bills include:

• A bill that would require universal background checks for all firearms, regardless of who is selling them. 
• A bill to stop the flow of untraceable ghost guns pouring into underground markets across Pennsylvania. 
• Red flag laws, or Extreme Risk Protection Orders that would allow loved ones, family members, or law enforcement to ask a judge for a hearing to temporarily disarm someone in crisis. 

Unfortunately, two gun violence prevention bills — one that would ban bump stocks and one requiring gun sales records to be filed electronically — failed final floor votes in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in May 2024. One Democrat voted no on these bills illustrating why the 1-seat Democratic majority in the State House must be expanded in 2024. If we want to make progress on preventing gun violence in Pennsylvania we have to support common sense candidates in our state House and Senate.