With abortion rights under new threat, Mass. lawmakers aim to better protect providers

Boston Globe

3 days ago

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'There are things we know now that we didn't know,' said
If passed, the provisions would restrict state agencies from sharing information with out-of-state investigations, require insurance companies to limit access to patient electronic medical records, and require hospitals to provide emergency abortions if medically necessary.
Under the bill, doctors could use the title of their practice instead of their name on prescription orders, so medication abortion prescribed over telehealth to an out-of-state patient would be protected.
The Massachusetts bill is part of the state Senate's
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'The Dobbs decision three years ago made it clear that the fight for abortion access is in the states,' Claire Teylouni, senior director of policy and programs at Boston-based advocacy group Reproductive Equity Now. 'It's up to them to fight back.'
The legislation up for a vote would protect providers like Foster's group, a so-called 'shield law' provider that ships abortion drugs to about 2,500 pregnant women a month. One-third of their patients are from Texas, she said, where abortions are mostly illegal and doctors who perform them face severe penalties, including potential prison time.
The update to the legislation comes at a crucial time, Teylouni said.
In January, Louisiana
On the topic of gender care, just last week, the US Supreme Court
Massachusetts is one of
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Sam Whiting, general counsel at the conservative-leaning Massachusetts Family Institute, argued that the shield laws allow doctors to skirt accountability by hiding their names, and said the idea of shielding doctors and patients violates other states' right to impose abortion bans or limits on 'gender transition surgeries.'
'It's an infringement on the sovereignty of other states to do what they want,' he said. 'It's Massachusetts trying to export abortion to other states.'
Thirteen states now have total abortion bans, and 28 others ban abortion after six weeks, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank that tracks state policies.
Massachusetts' current burst of activism began in 2020, even before the Dobbs decision, catalyzed by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
In anticipation that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe, lawmakers
The state is currently sitting on
Meanwhile, the federal government has continued to chip away at abortion rights. While the Trump administration has largely relegated the issue of abortion to the states, the government has
rolled back a rule related to patient privacy, and withheld much of the funding for a federal grant program that provides reproductive healthcare to low-income people.
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As a result, whether someone can access abortion has become 'more of a geographic question,' said Kimya Forouzan, a state policy expert at the Guttmacher Institute, the reproductive rights thinktank.
'We've seen the impact these shield laws have had in ensuring some people can still access care even if their state bans the provision of abortion care,' Forouzan said. 'Some states recognize where we are at, where the federal government is at, and the hostility the federal government has toward sexual and reproductive healthcare broadly.'
Anjali Huynh of the Globe staff contributed to this report, which included material from the Associated Press.
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at