David Crary / Associated Press

The Rev. Eboni Marshall Turman, a Yale Divinity School professor and former assistant pastor at Abyssinian, was among the candidates interviewed in the search for a successor to longtime senior pastor Calvin O. Butts III, who died in 2022.

Even as numerous Republican-governed states push for sweeping bans on abortion, there is a coinciding surge of concern in some Democratic-led states that options for reproductive health care are dwindling due to expansion of Catholic hospital networks. These are states such as Oregon, Washington, California, New York and Connecticut, where abortion will remain legal despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.