PORTLAND, Ore. – Megan Chambers was 27, the mother of two children younger than 5, trapped in a toxic marriage. She was also pregnant.

Discussions with her then-husband, her mother and her close friends led to an clear, but hard, conclusion: Chambers would have an abortion. She scheduled the procedure at a local Planned Parenthood, a decision she said she has never regretted. As a Medicaid patient in what is widely considered the most progressive state on abortion rights in the country, Chambers paid nothing out of pocket.

“I know the cost of motherhood,” said Chambers, now 30. “I had done the emotional and physical labor of parenting two kids. … So I chose myself and my children.”

For most women who choose abortion, she said, “they’re choosing survival.”

But if anti-abortion groups in Oregon have their way next month, women who rely on tax dollars to fund their healthcare won’t have that choice going forward.

Framed as a tax debate, Measure 106 would amend the Oregon constitution to eliminate elective abortions for anyone on Medicaid or state-funded insurance, including public employees. It’s one of three anti-abortion measures before voters this November in the latest effort to dramatically limit abortion access in America. West Virginia and Alabama, two typically red states, are also voting on anti-abortion initiatives.

But advocates of legal abortion are paying special attention to Oregon, often considered the north star of reproductive rights. They worry that if abortion rights are stripped in what’s often considered a liberal utopia, what will come next? Anti-abortion groups could use this as a rallying cry to go after other states and ultimately reopen the debate on Roe vs. Wade, allowing the now Conservative-leaning Supreme Court to overturn a law that’s stood since 1973.

Oregon is one of just 16 states that funds medically necessary abortions through Medicaid, and one of only seven states to fund all abortions, including elective, through Medicaid.

“People everywhere need to be paying attention to this,” said Grayson Dempsey, the executive director at NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon. “In this world, with (Justice Brett) Kavanaugh on the (Supreme) Court, we need a state where we continue to hold the line on abortion care, or anti-abortion extremists are going to think they can make inroads anywhere.”

Abortion restrictions in 33 states

Three months after her abortion, with her marriage officially over, Chambers began her career as a social worker, a move she said would have been impossible if she’d had a third child. She became financially independent and got off Medicaid for the first time in her life.

Chambers was surprised by the physical and emotional pain of abortion – yes, she said, she was sad about ending her pregnancy and she felt guilt that she did not feel love or connection to the child inside of her. But she is adamant that those feelings do not mean she made the wrong decision.

Her experience parallels that of her peers: A 2015 study showed that most women who have abortions do not regret them.

She felt “disappointed with myself,” for getting pregnant, as she had been a loyal birth control user and advocate for years. She said she was raised in a "pro-choice household," but admits she was often guilty of reciting a line she’s heard many of her friends repeat: “Of course I support a woman’s right to choose – it’s just that I would never choose that.”

Chambers grimaced when thinking back to that philosophy.

“It’s easy to say that,” she said, “until you’re staring at yourself in the mirror, realizing you don’t want to be pregnant.”

Abortion rights have been pummeled across the country over the last decade, as Republicans gained power in state legislatures and pushed an anti-abortion agenda. Backed by President Donald Trump, who as a candidate promised to appoint anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court and dangled the idea of punishing women who have had abortions, the GOP has grown brash in its determination to defund Planned Parenthood.

Dawn Laguens, executive vice president at Planned Parenthood, said via email that, “since 2016, the Trump-Pence administration has emboldened anti-abortion politicians across the country,” even though multiple studies show that Americans overwhelming support Roe vs. Wade

More:Their goal of Roe v. Wade reversal in sight, many Republicans have private second thoughts

In the past seven years, more than 400 abortion restrictions have been enacted in 33 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a national research center that studies and tracks abortion.

But such restrictions have so far bypassed Oregon, a longtime champion of women’s reproductive rights.

Last August, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed into law the Reproductive Health Equity Act, ensuring any resident could access an abortion regardless of income, immigration status, Zip code or gender identity. It was hailed as America’s most progressive reproductive health policy.

Brown, who is in a tight re-election race, said Trump’s election two years ago “set off alarm bells for me.” She knew she’d need to be ready to battle anti-abortion groups, even in Oregon.

“Oregon is a state of contradictions,” Brown said. “People think of us as a very blue state, but if you really look, we’ve been purple for many, many years.”

Brown has spent most of her career fighting for reproductive care, helping defeat three other anti-abortion measures in the last three decades, including a 1990 proposal that would have outlawed abortion. Oregonians voted it down 68 percent to 32 percent.

Still, Oregon’s uniquely accessible ballot requires a relatively small numbers of signatures to qualify an initiative, which means progressive rights are always at risk. Oregon Life United, the political action committee backing Measure 106, submitted 117,799 valid signatures to get on the 2018 ballot – just 221 above the requirement – in a state of 4 million people.

Brown takes issue with anyone trying to deny women what she considers “basic social, economic and political equality.”

“For us to be treating women’s healthcare differently, it’s sexism,” she said. “We don’t say, I don’t want men to have prostate exams. I mean, come on.”

She understands abortion can bring up a wave of personal feelings. But she doesn’t think that justifies pushing personal beliefs on someone else.

If you don’t want or believe in abortion, Brown said, then don’t have one.

Despite a dramatic decline in access to abortion clinics – especially in red states – since the 1980s, abortion itself is common in the U.S. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 1 in 4 women will have an abortion by the age of 45. In America, it’s also safer to have an abortion than to give birth.

Anti-abortion? Or anti-tax?

Cindy Brunk was 19, taking a year off between high school and college, when she discovered she was pregnant. She didn’t know who the father was, and didn’t know what to do.

It was 1981 and Brunk said her parents, along with a handful of others she confided in, encouraged her to have an abortion.

“Rather than, ‘let’s help you choose parenting,’ what I heard was, ‘Well, you wouldn’t be able to finish school’ or, ‘I had an abortion and it was no big deal,’” she recalled, her voice catching. “The boy I wanted to be the father said he didn’t want to be a parent. … I was like a mother bird looking for somewhere to build a nest, and being turned away.

“Abortion was not an empowering choice for me. It was an act of desperation.”

Brunk rode a bus nine hours to a clinic in Southern Oregon to have the procedure, then returned home to work back-to-back waitress shifts. She said that for 17 years after her abortion, she “blacked out those three days,” which she attributes to a type of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Now 56 – and the proud mother of four grown children – Brunk is working to help pass Measure 106. She said abortion should be illegal because when it’s accessible “parents are coercing their daughters, (and) boyfriends, abusers and sex traffickers are able to easily put someone in that position.”

More:Donald Trump seeks new rule restricting federal funding for abortion providers

Proponents for 106 are hoping to win by framing the conversation not around abortion, but around taxes – as in, shouldn’t individuals decide where their taxes go? Measure 106’s tagline is, “Your money, your choice.”

Dempsey at NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon said this language is purposefully misleading.

“It’s pretty apparent that they’re using the language of the pro-choice movement, because they know we have a pro-choice voting electorate,” she said. “But it doesn’t take much to dig below their message and know their end game, which is to outlaw abortion.”

Nichole Bentz, the spokeswoman for Yes on Measure 106, said 106’s motivation is a mix.

“The argument about why to support 106 is that (abortion) is such a personal choice, tax dollars shouldn’t be going toward that,” she said. “It’s not all pro-life motivated. … We want to pass 106 to give Oregon taxpayers freedom.”

Oregon Life United’s website is more blunt. The first line on its “about” page reads, “Our mission is to pass Oregon’s first pro-life law.”

According to the Oregon Health Authority, more than 57,000 abortions have been covered under the Oregon Health Plan (Oregon’s version of Medicaid) since 2002, totaling $24.4 million in taxpayer dollars.

Opponents to Measure 106 argue that it will disproportionately impact low-income women and women of color. Numbers back them up. According to a study published in April by the Oregon Health Authority, only 45 percent of people on Medicaid in Oregon are white, but the state is 82 percent Caucasian.

Approving the ballot measure would affect more than just adult women on Medicaid, which number almost 250,000 in Oregon. Employees on any type of state-funded health insurance, or roughly 143,000 women, would also not have access to abortion.

Dempsey at NARAL worries about 106 setting a “frightening precedent.” First people don’t want to fund women’s reproductive care, but what comes after that? Will taxpayers decide they don’t want to fund medical procedures for disabled children, or experimental cancer treatment that could save lives?

New sense of urgency

At a breakfast in mid October, faith leaders from around the state gathered at Congregation Beth Israel in northwest Portland to voice their support for rejecting Measure 106.

When U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., stood up, she explained that in her eyes, “faith and reproductive freedom are not incompatible.”

“People say they don’t want their tax dollars to pay for abortion – well, I also hear from people who don’t want their tax dollars to go to the Trump administration, or to go to war,” Bonamici later told USA TODAY. “But that’s not how it works, and this is not how we amend our Constitution, by putting medical decisions in it.”

Bonamici said she is constantly trying to explain to colleagues in Washington that outlawing abortion won’t make it go away. It’ll just make it dangerous. Plus, she points out, studies routinely show that abortion rates go down under Democratic presidents, when contraception, preventative healthcare and sex education are widely available.

For Bonamici and other advocates of abortion rights across the country, Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court has brought a new sense of urgency in the fight to protect abortion rights.

It’s an intensity Chambers feels every day.

“Ending that pregnancy was the catalyst for me to put my life back together,” Chambers said. “If I’d had that child three years ago, I would have been stuck.”

What she fears is a future where women won’t be able to find that same relief – in Oregon, or anywhere else.