HB 7135 An Act Concerning The Provision of Reproductive and Gender-Affirming Health Care Services to Patients
Jump to:
Template | Background on CT’s Shield Law | General Talking Points | Shield Law Story | Provider/Patient Talking Points
Shared from our friends at Planned Parenthood Southern New England, Reproductive Equity Now, and GLAD Law.
Public Hearing Date/ Time: Monday, March 24th at 10:00 AM
Committee: Judiciary Committee
Location: Room 2C of the Legislative office building and Live Streamed on Youtube
Written testimony due by Sunday, March 23 at 3:00 pm.
Below are directions on how to submit written testimony and a testimony template with helpful talking points and information.
How to Submit Written Testimony:
- Please submit written testimony (Word or PDF format) using this online testimony submission form
- Select March 24 @ 10 am as the hearing date, then select HB7135 as the bill you are supporting. Clearly indicate your name and that you are submitting your testimony in support. You can also submit written anonymously if you are more comfortable.
- Messaging, bill information, and helpful talking points are included below in the testimony template.
**** For a testimony template, talking points and more information on the bill please see below!
The following testimony template is meant as a guide to help you format & write your testimony– remember that your personal story and reason for supporting H.B. 7135 will be the most impactful!
REMINDER: Please remove all instructions/ suggestions and replace the yellow highlighting with your own writing.
Senator Winfield, Representative Stafstrom, and Distinguished Members of the Judiciary Committee:
My name is [Insert Your Name Here], I am from [city or town], and I am [mention your title, organization/ group affiliation, or any other appropriate and relevant information]. Thank you for the opportunity to testify in strong support of H.B. 7135 An Act Concerning The Provision of Reproductive and Gender-Affirming Health Care Services to Patients. This legislation will ensure our state continues to do everything in its power to protect Connecticut’s healthcare providers, and access to essential reproductive health care services, including abortion, as well as prescribed health care accessed by transgender people and their families.
Share your story! In 1-2 paragraphs, explain why this issue is important to you.
- What is your personal connection to the issue?
- How will this impact you, your family, your community?
- If passed, how would this help you care for patients? How will this bill further protect you as a provider? Your provider colleagues?
- How will this legislation assist in expanding access to patients so they can access the abortion care or medically necessary healthcare for transpeople?
If helpful– please reference/ utilize the talking points & information to assist in explaining why legislators should support the bill, why it’s needed, and what the bill seeks to accomplish.
Please make sure to write comments in your own words in paragraph form – it’s your individual voice, lived experience, and the personal touches that make the testimony more compelling and impactful!
Lastly, add a concluding statement and thank them. Here’s an example:
We/I strongly urge the Judiciary Committee and CT General Assembly to support H.B. 7135. By strengthening Connecticut’s Reproductive Freedom Defense Act and our state’s shield protections with these added provisions for telehealth providers, Connecticut will be able to offer a critical layer of defense for its dedicated and compassionate reproductive health care workforce seeking to respond to the national public health emergency that is our post-Roe reality.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this important bill.
Sincerely,
[Insert your name and if applicable org/title/profession/town here]
Background Information on Connecticut’s Shield Law (PA 22-19 Repro Freedom Defense Act)
- In 2022, and in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated federal constitutional protections for abortion, Connecticut acted boldly and proactively by passing the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act –a first of its kind shield law to protect Connecticut providers from the reach of anti-abortion extremists in hostile states attempting to chill, restrict, and criminalize abortion access beyond their borders. Shortly after passing the initial bill, lawmakers expanded the law’s reach to protect against increased attacks on and efforts to criminalize and punish providers of safe, effective, and medically necessary care for transgender youth.
- This legislation, which inspired a wave of shield laws across the country, ensures that:
- Reproductive and gender-affirming care providers are protected from professional licensure repercussions or discriminatory medical malpractice insurance rate hikes if they are subject to abusive out-of-state litigation or professional disciplinary actions regarding reproductive or gender-affirming health care services that are legal in Connecticut;
- Any person subject to this abusive litigation can counter-sue for damages;
- Connecticut public agencies, employees, officers, and anyone acting on the state’s behalf are prohibited from providing information or using state resources to cooperate with another state’s investigation into reproductive or gender-affirming health care services that are legal in Connecticut;
- Connecticut’s courts will not compel a person in Connecticut to give testimony or produce information for use in connection with abusive litigation and judges will not issue any summons for criminal prosecution;
- Health care institutions are prohibited from sharing or disclosing protected health information related to reproductive or gender-affirming health care services in any civil, probate, legislative, or administrative proceedings; and
- The Governor will not extradite a person who is charged in another state as a result of engaging in reproductive or gender-affirming care services unless those services would be unlawful in Connecticut.
H.B. 7135 General Talking Points:
- State anti-abortion politicians were never going to stop at overturning Roe v. Wade. They want to control our bodies and our lives, including through banning abortion nationwide and limiting access to life-saving, medically necessary gender affirming care.
- Even with abortion bans in 19 states, anti-abortion lawmakers have not stopped their assault on access to care. They continue to target those that help pregnant people access abortion, including abortion funds and–most recently–providers in access states.
- Efforts to restrict or criminalize medically necessary care for transgender young people aim to prevent families of transgender young people from working with doctors to ensure their child gets the care they need.
- Increasingly, we’ve also seen efforts in other states to undermine people’s ability to use assisted reproduction services, like IVF, and to restrict access to contraception.
- Attacks, bans and restrictions on reproductive health care, including abortion, cause the most harm to those already facing unequal barriers to health care, especially young people, Black and Brown people, LGBTQ+ people, and those struggling to make ends meet.
- Everyone should be able to make their own decisions about their bodies and their futures and access the care they need to live healthy, fulfilling lives without interference from politicians. Someone’s ability to get the care they need and to define their own path should never depend on where they live.
- Connecticut has the opportunity and responsibility to protect its providers who are able to provide medication abortion and medically necessary care for transgender young people via telemedicine to out-of-state patients, and an obligation to continue to expand access to safe and compassionate abortion care and essential, age-appropriate medical care for transgender young people here in the Nutmeg State.
- Passage of H.B. 7135 will strengthen Connecticut’s shield law, and to offer an additional layer of protection for abortion providers and providers offering medically necessary care to transgender people, including to patients that live in states that ban abortions.
- While many of people across the country may seek the option of traveling to a protected state to seek abortion care that is no longer available to them near home—like the 400 patients who traveled to seek care in Connecticut between January and June of 2023—there are countless others who cannot afford the cost, time off from work, child care arrangements, or myriad compounding logistics necessary to make this travel to a protected state possible.
- For low-income patients, the cost of abortion is often a substantial barrier to care, which is only exacerbated when coupled with the costs of associated travel.
- Research supports the impact of geospatial barriers, such as residence and travel distance, on a patient’s ability to access timely abortion care– and increased access to telehealth may increase the ability for patients to access care.
- Between work and other obligations – like caring for the children they already have – many pregnant people simply don’t have the time required to travel the long distances necessary to get care in an access state. For some patients, the travel takes days, that means time off from work, childcare, and more.
- More than half of all abortions in the U.S. (63%) are performed using medication abortion.
- Medication abortion, which typically involves a regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, is incredibly safe and effective. It has been used more than five million times in the United States to end pregnancy since it was approved over 20 years ago.
- Medication abortion helps people make their own health care decisions, expands access to abortion care, and helps reduce abortion stigma.
- We know that lawmakers that oppose abortion and health care for transgender people will continue attempting to end all access to this critical health care – not just in ban states, but nationwide – through government overreach and hostile enforcement actions. Strengthening Connecticut’s shield protections and ensuring the state continues to do everything in its power to protect its providers, these protections will seek to mitigate risks to licensed providers in our state.
- Three years after the Dobbs decision, more than 19 states have taken action to severely restrict or entirely ban access to abortion, and more than 25 million women of reproductive age as well as transgender and nonbinary people live in a state where abortion is severely restricted or completely banned. Connecticut must continue to do all it can to protect and expand access to abortion care in this public health crisis.
- And more than 25 states have banned or restricted families from accessing medically necessary healthcare, aligned with standards of care, for their transgender children, and six states have made it a felony to provide certain forms of medically necessary care to transgender young people. Parents and families, not the government, know what is best for their children. Just like any other parents, the parents of a transgender young person should have the freedom to ensure their child can receive the prescribed medical care they need. Connecticut has a strong foundation of protecting young people, families, and providers from government overreach in other states; this bill would build on that foundation.
- Currently, through legislation or executive order, 22 states and Washington D.C. have shield protections for reproductive health care, and 17 States and Washington D.C. have shield law protections related to gender-affirming health care. The most robust shield laws in the country, which have been enacted through legislation in 8 states, include explicit protections for telehealth providers.
- There were more than 9,700 abortions per month provided via telehealth under shield law protections in the second quarter of 2024. This represents about half of all telehealth abortion care, and a 5% increase since the first quarter of 2024.
- Patients and providers deserve better than political interference, medically unnecessary barriers, or threat of criminalization because of the outcome of our pregnancies. And families of transgender young people do not want politicians dictating personal healthcare decisions.
- As the first state in the country to pass a shield law, Connecticut made a promise to protect patients and providers from out of state overreach. H.B. 7135 would follow through on this promise, and reaffirm its commitment to protecting all of our state’s providers and to all patients – including those whose own state governments have banned necessary, life-saving care.
First Challenges to Shield Laws: TX Lawsuit and Criminal Indictment of NY Physician Dr. Carpenter.
- This past December, the Texas Attorney General filed a lawsuit against the New York doctor, Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who founded the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, alleging that the doctor violated Texas state abortion laws by sending Texas patients abortion pills via telehealth.
- In late January of this year, Dr. Carpenter was indicted on charges of criminal abortion by a Louisiana grand jury.
- Both of these cases show that anti-abortion states are eager to attack out-of-state abortion providers. Luckily, New York state has a strong telehealth shield act, which has so far prevented Texas and Louisiana from enforcing their draconian abortion laws against Dr. Carpenter––Governor Kathy Hochul has refused to extradite Dr. Carpenter to Louisiana per the New York shield law, and, the telehealth shield has made New York Courts unable to enforce the $100,000 fine levied against Dr. Carpenter in the Texas lawsuit.
- Shield laws help to ensure those providing necessary health care – including abortion and health care for transgender people – can continue to do so even when facing the threat of hostile enforcement from ban states. This bill is a clear message to hostile states that Connecticut will not accept a future where essential, life-saving is criminalized and unavailable.
Health Care Provider/ Patient Talking Points:
- No out-of-state lawmaker should be able to dictate what care Connecticut providers can offer to their patients or use state overreach to prevent us from offering essential health care.
- As states throughout this country ban abortion and health care for transgender people, Connecticut providers will continue to treat our patients with compassion and with the highest standard of care – because everyone should be able to make decisions about their health and their lives without unnecessary government interference.
- Comprehensive shield laws are one strategy to meet the needs of those seeking abortion across the country. It is essential for the health and well-being of pregnant people, their families, and communities that we continue to fight until abortion is fully legal, widely available, and readily accessible to anyone who needs it.
- Shield laws have enabled tens of thousands of people in states with abortion bans or bans on telehealth abortion to access timely, affordable medication abortion care from licensed medical providers. As attacks on the transgender community increase–including access to necessary health care–we must continue taking steps to make sure this care also remains available and accessible.
- We are physicians/ doctors/providers—not lawyers. We recognize the nationwide chilling effect the Dobbs decision has had on our profession, as fellow doctors, physicians, nurses, doulas, midwives, and other health care providers are continuously forced to navigate and contend with an ever evolving, hostile legal landscape.
- Our job is to provide the highest standard of care for our patients– no matter who they are, where they are from, where they live, or how much money they make. H.B. 7135 would reaffirm Connecticut’s commitment to protecting health care providers here in the state of Connecticut, and strengthen protections for providers in this state to meet this moment, and care for those patients seeking abortion and medically necessary care for transgender people.
- Telehealth allows patients and providers to talk to each other via video, send or receive messages via chat, text, or email, and monitor a patient’s progress remotely. A growing number of healthcare providers use telehealth to provide primary, mental health, and reproductive health care services, which increases access to care that might otherwise be out of reach.
- Using telehealth, health care providers can provide sexual and reproductive health care and gender affirming care virtually so that patients can receive the same safe and effective care at home or wherever works best for them.
- Research shows that telehealth for medication abortion care reduces logistical barriers and is supported by patients.
- Telehealth models for medication abortion care are equally as safe as in-person models and could enable patients to access abortion care earlier in their pregnancy.
- Nearly 98% of patients had complete abortions without the need for additional intervention and less than one percent (0.25%) of patients experienced adverse events. Synchronous (video call) and asynchronous care (secure text messaging with the provider) are comparably effective and safe).
- When comparing mailed to in-person dispensing of abortion pills, one study found that mailing did not significantly prolong the time from patients’ first contact with the clinic to mifepristone ingestion, nor did it increase pregnancy duration at mifepristone ingestion.
- Another study found telehealth for medication abortion to be a more accessible option than in-person care due to client perception of the burdens of travel, clinic availability, and costs associated with in-person care.
- We are already beginning to see these widespread impacts on the health care provider workforce in the time since the Dobbs decision was rendered. The environment of fear and intimidation created by bans on abortion and gender affirming care weaken our health care safety net. This bill can mitigate threats to the provider ecosystem in Connecticut.
- As providers, we know the life- threatening outcomes that come from political and ideological interference in health care.
- Since Dobbs, OBGYN physicians have been sounding the alarm on the negative impact that abortion bans have had on maternal health and patient safety, particularly inequities for Black and brown communities in maternal health, management of pregnancy-related emergencies, and pregnancy-related mortality.
- Providers of health care for transgender people have similarly expressed that denying medical care and support to transgender youth puts them at increased risk of serious harms, including depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts or behavior. But when transgender youth, like all youth, receive the medical care they need, they are able to thrive and have healthy, happy childhoods that set them up for success in life.
- Women who were denied abortion and gave birth reported more life-threatening complications like eclampsia and postpartum hemorrhage that those who received wanted abortions.
- Denying necessary care to people has long-term, reverberating impacts in individuals’ lives and for their families.
- Even before the decision in Dobbs, research, such as The Turnaway Study, has illustrated the harmful and long-term implications on individuals’ health, safety, and socioeconomic status when denied access to a wanted and needed abortion.
- Compared with women and birthing people who were able to access desired and necessary abortion care, pregnant people denied care, and gave birth, reported more life-threatening complications, including eclampsia and postpartum hemorrhage.
- And when families and transgender young people cannot access the care those young people need, it is harder for them to thrive and have happy, healthy childhoods that set them up for success in life.