As the national pressure from conservatives to restrict access to abortion intensifies, including a proposal in Missouri to stop residents from leaving the state to get the procedure, Connecticut is considering a new approach to protecting abortion providers here and that , which help people cross state lines. come to a clinic.
Missouri’s bill would go even further than Texas’ six-week abortion ban, which also seeks to avoid legal challenges by enabling private citizens to enforce the law. The bill would allow people to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident have an abortion, even outside of state doctors
In Connecticut, which codified the right to abortion in 1990, state reps responded. legal threat residents here could face from other states.
They introduced a bill that would prevent both state and local agencies in Connecticut from assisting out-of-state investigations into abortions that are being made legal here. Connecticut courts would also be barred from helping to obtain deposits of witnesses in out-of-state trials.
The bill would also prevent Connecticut medical records regarding a patient’s reproductive health care from being used in an out-of-state trial or criminal investigation.
The proposal is just an effort by Democrats and pro-election attorneys in Connecticut to strengthen access and protect providers here with the likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court will oust Landmark Roe v. Wade abduction case decreases or severely weakens. Other states, including California, are considering similar moves.
If Roe is reversed, about half of the states are expected to limit or ban abortion almost immediately. As a result, Connecticut could become a haven for people coming from other states where laws are more restrictive.
“The proposals we are pushing forward with are intended to prepare the state for the end of Roe,” Blumenthal said, both in terms of access to reproductive health care, as well as protecting residents and abortion providers from other states. “trying to criminalize their behavior here.”.
The last time states were this “diametrically opposed” to an issue was the Fugitive Slavery Act, which allows the capture and return of fleeing slaves from one state to another, Blumenthal said.
“It’s about whether we’ll leave other states’ laws here,” he said.
The bill came Monday during a public hearing of the Legislative Justice Committee with Republican Reps Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford, and Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin, expressing concerns about the precedent of the law.
“I can certainly see states that have very strong protection under the Second Amendment trying to do the same exact thing for Connecticut, which severely limits the constitutional rights of its citizens,” Dubitsky said. “If you start this way, I can see no logical place where it would stop.”
David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law who has spent decades studying legal issues surrounding reproductive rights, said Connecticut’s bill is a “cutting-edge” approach to anti-abortion tactics for its laws. set up here.
“These laws suck anyone who helps another person to get an abortion against the anti-abortion laws with almost unlimited financial liability,” Cohen said. “The people of Connecticut could very well be targeted by these laws in the near future.”
Under the Texas Abortion Act, a judge can award at least $ 10,000 in damages if a lawsuit is successful, which would also be allowed under Missouri’s proposal. A bill in Idaho that would do the same thing was waiting for the governor’s signature.
Blumenthal and Gilchrest’s proposal “would seriously discourage anyone from suing a Connecticut resident under any of these new laws,” Cohen said. “And if anyone got a verdict against a Connecticut resident, then they would now be liable in Connecticut courts for the damages they received.”
julia.bergman@hearstmediact.com
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