We need shield laws for abortion pill providers
Last June, the Supreme Court obliterated Roe, leaving millions of people across the country with no local access to abortion care. Changing the overall abortion landscape across the United States will take decades of work. There is, however, an immediate way to help: States where abortion is legal need to pass shield laws to protect clinicians providing abortion pills through telemedicine into states where abortion is illegal. New York, a leading pro-choice state, must continue its leadership on this issue.
Studies show that denial of abortion care is correlated with higher risks of complications from pregnancy and childbirth, higher risks of suicide, and higher rates of poverty for the individual, family and the next generation of children. Since the fall of Roe, 12 states have banned abortion and 12 others are poised to pass bans or harsh restrictions.
States like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas have become abortion care deserts. People must now either travel long distances or order abortion pills online from overseas or through underground domestic networks. Because many people can’t get abortion procedures or pills in a timely manner, what would be very early abortions are pushed to later in pregnancy. Or people are forced to bear unwanted pregnancies and medically risky pregnancies, in states where the maternal mortality is already the highest.
Numerous studies document the safety of telemedicine abortion. Abortion pills have high efficacy, and complications are rare, whether taken in the office or at home. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently updated its guidelines declaring abortion pills via telemedicine safe, while newly allowing pharmacies to fill prescriptions.
There are clinicians, like me, ready to provide abortion pills via telemedicine to people in states where abortion care is
banned or restricted. A telemedicine shield law is needed to substantially protect clinicians, staff, and pharmacists practicing in New York state from actions taken by politically motivated officials in other states to protect our licenses and our malpractice coverage, and to protect us from criminal or civil lawsuits, from extradition, and from subpoenas of medical records.
Telemedicine shield laws are a budgetneutral way that blue states can fight back. Massachusetts has already passed one. A handful of states also have passed shield laws that protect providers when patients travel to them for an abortion, but these laws leave behind the people seeking abortions who are unable, unwilling or afraid to travel, those with less means.
State Sen. Shelley Mayer has taken the lead with S1066A, which has passed the Senate. On the Assembly side is Assemblymember
Karines Reyes with A1709A.
There is no time to waste. Calls to the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline, an all-volunteer hotline staffed by experienced clinicians, which I helped found in 2019, have gone through the roof since the Supreme Court’s ruling. The greatest shock for us are the calls from people who, because of numerous delays, are using abortion pills after the first trimester and are then traumatized by delivering a tiny but recognizable fetus at home. They are not in medical danger, but this is the cruelty of medically unsound abortion restrictions.
Clinicians in New York know it is our moral duty to act. But we can’t do so alone. We need the state Assembly to swiftly pass and send these bills to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk to be signed into law, enabling providers to help people get Fda-approved pills mailed to them in a timely way, no matter their ZIP code. We can, and we must, ameliorate at least some of the incalculable pain, fear, and desperation occurring every day under these cruel abortion bans.