California Passes Bill Allowing Omission of Patients’ Names From Abortion Pill Bottles

Health|California Passes Bill Allowing Omission of Patients’ Names From Abortion Pill Bottles

California legislators have passed one of the strongest measures so far to protect health care providers who send abortion pills to states with abortion bans and the patients who receive them.

The bill, approved by wide margins in the State Assembly Wednesday night and the Senate Tuesday, is expected to be signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. It would allow health care providers to mail abortion pills with only a minimum of identifying information: Medication labels and paperwork in the packages could omit the name of the patient, prescriber and pharmacist. The legislation is expected to have broad national impact because a majority of medication abortion services across the country use pharmacies based in California to dispense and ship the medication.

The measure is intended to make it harder for states with abortion bans to develop evidence to make legal cases against doctors and others operating under shield laws that were adopted by many states to protect abortion pill prescribers after the Supreme Court revoked the national right to abortion. It is also intended to reassure women in states with bans who seek abortions and who may be afraid to obtain prescription pills, fearing they could be identified by the authorities if their name is on the bottle.

The abortion shield laws in at least eight states prevent officials from obeying subpoenas, extradition requests and other legal actions that states with bans take against abortion providers. That is a stark departure from typical interstate practices of cooperating in legal matters.

James Bopp Jr., the general counsel for National Right to Life, called legislation to strengthen shield laws “almost horrifying.” He said the California bill would result in “no accountability for abortion drugs or the people that prescribed them,” adding “even if you find the doctor, they could say, ‘Well I didn’t prescribe those pills.’ How are you going to prove that the pills she took in this box with no names on it were the ones that he prescribed?”

Shield-law providers have become a major avenue of abortion access for women in states with bans, currently serving an estimated 12,000 patients per month — about one-eighth of all abortion patients in America. As use of shield-law providers has grown, abortion opponents in states with bans have begun filing civil lawsuits and criminal charges, with at least one case — a showdown between Texas and New York — poised to become a constitutional contest likely to reach the Supreme Court.