The Connecticut Legislature is on the cusp of making the state a legal safe harbor for abortion seekers and providers to counter moves in Republican-led states to implement bans enforced by private citizens.
The bill, HB 5414, is a response to laws in Texas and Idaho that ban abortions early in gestation and authorize private parties to take legal action against providers of abortions and people who help patients obtain them. The Connecticut measure passed out of the state House earlier this week by a vote of 87-60, with 14 Democrats voting against the bill and seven Republicans crossing the aisle to support it. While the bill awaits action in the majority-Democrat Senate, Gov. Ned Lamont has signaled he will support it.
“The culture wars are lapping up across our shores here in Connecticut, and we’re standing together. We’re making sure that when it comes to our women, when it comes to our choice, when it comes to these cultural wars, we stand on behalf of the women in the state of Connecticut, and that’s not gonna change,” Lamont said on Tuesday.
The bill would provide other Democrat-majority legislatures with a blueprint for protecting abortion providers from red-state actions aimed at limiting access to abortions. The Texas and Idaho laws, which prompted Democratic Reps. Matt Blumenthal and Jillian Gilchrest to write HB 5414, ban the procedure once a heartbeat is detected at about six weeks. The Texas law gives any individual the right to file civil lawsuits against an abortion provider or anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure, and the Texan who sues stands to win a bounty of at least $10,000 in “statutory damages” per abortion. In Idaho, meanwhile, the heartbeat ban includes a similar enforcement provision but narrows the pool of people able to sue an abortion provider to include the patient and the unborn child’s relatives. Those civil suits can yield at least $20,000 plus legal fees.
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If enacted, Connecticut state courts would be barred from enforcing penalties set by courts in other states with the civil enforcement mechanism in place, providing anyone who performed or facilitated an abortion in Connecticut with a legal shield. Under current law, if an abortion provider was found guilty in Texas and ordered to pay $10,000 but flees to Connecticut, Connecticut would then be required to send that person back to Texas to face the consequences. Under HB 5414, the abortion provider would not be extradited to Texas for performing the procedure, which is legal in Connecticut.
Anyone from out of state who is sued for having aided and abetted an abortion, such as the parent or guardian who goes with the patient to Connecticut for the procedure, can legally fight back. This means that a Texas mother who is sued for taking her daughter out of state for an abortion can countersue, collecting damages and attorneys’ fees, including those spent defending herself in her home state and the fees spent on bringing suit in Connecticut.
The bill also states that Connecticut officials would be barred from sharing private medical information with out-of-state investigators seeking to penalize anyone who aids and abets an abortion and went to Connecticut for the procedure.
“As states around the country pass extreme laws seeking to penalize or ban abortion rights, I’m proud that CT continues to be a leader on reproductive rights,” said Blumenthal, who is the son of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the senior senator from Connecticut.
The recent proliferation of laws that seek to penalize people in other states is likely to spark another legal conflict, forcing judges to contend with whether one state can regulate activity in another, as long as that activity concerns the state. As laws such as those in Texas and Idaho become more prevalent, more women are expected to seek abortions in other states with different laws on the books.
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The Connecticut bill would go into effect on July 1, 2022, soon after the Supreme Court is due to rule on a case regarding a 15-week ban on abortion in Mississippi. The majority-conservative court has signaled its willingness to side with the anti-abortion side in the case, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which poses the question of whether states can ban abortion before the point at which the infant can live outside the womb, usually thought to be at 22 to 24 weeks.
The possibility of a weakened Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal, has emboldened Republican-led states to introduce a wave of bills aimed at limiting access to the procedure. For instance, a member of the Missouri Legislature is advancing a Texas-like policy that, if successful, would criminalize facilitating abortions. Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman’s proposal, which she is pushing as an amendment to three health-related House bills, would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident have an abortion, including out-of-state physicians, the person transporting the patient to the clinic, and anyone helping to pay for the procedure. The policy targets providers who help Missouri residents obtain abortions in Illinois, where a Planned Parenthood clinic sits right across the Mississippi River from St. Louis.
