The Vermont House has advanced a bill which intends to legally protect out-of-state patients who come to Vermont to receive reproductive health care, and safeguard the Vermont doctors who provide such care.
Colloquially referred to as a shield law, H.89 is Vermont lawmakers’ latest move to beef up protections for abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade case precedent, thereby ending nearly 50-year-old nationwide abortion protections, last summer. The bill also includes protections for gender-affirming care for transgender patients, as numerous state legislatures throughout the country attempt to restrict access to that care, as well.
The legislation would protect Vermont health care providers from investigation, interrogations, subpoenas, extradition or arrest by out-of-state entities should that doctor provide reproductive care to a patient who traveled to Vermont from a state where such care is illegal. The bill is relatively limited in what protections it can offer patients once they leave Vermont but does provide some protection by essentially kneecapping out-of-state investigators.
House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, who formerly worked for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, told VTDigger months before the 2023 legislative session began that a shield law was a major legislative priority this year.
“Given the very aggressive attacks on reproductive rights and reproductive health care across the country, I think it was really important for us to pass this legislation to protect providers and patients,” she told VTDigger after Thursday’s floor vote. (Krowinski, who is acting governor while Gov. Phil Scott is out-of-state, was unable to preside over Thursday’s proceedings.)
The House on Thursday approved H.89 on its second reading by voice vote, so no vote count is available. The body will vote on the bill once more before it heads to the Senate. Should it pass there, it will go to the governor, who has told reporters that he supports the spirit of the bill.
H.89 is not Vermont’s first legal expansion or protection of abortion rights post-Roe. In November, Vermonters overwhelmingly approved Article 22, also known as the Reproductive Liberty Amendment, at the ballot box. The measure enshrined in the state constitution that “an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling State interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”
On Tuesday, before the House Judiciary Committee cast a 9-1 vote in favor of H.89, Rep. Will Notte, D-Rutland City, harkened back to the November election results.
“We’re frequently accused of existing in a bubble up here and not being cognizant of the views of average Vermonters on the ground,” Notte said. ”But has any bill ever had a better test case? We had Article 22 before the voters in November, and it passed in every community in Vermont. … People in Vermont made it very clear that a woman’s right to choose is very important.”
The “next logical step,” Notte said, was to safeguard Vermont health care providers from anti-abortion out-of-state actors “overextending into our borders.”
In the roughly eight months since the high court issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, seven other states have passed laws similar to H.89 and two others are mulling over similar legislation now.
H.89 responds to, as a legal expert put it during one of the bill’s various hearings, the impending “interjurisdictional abortion wars.” Krowinski told VTDigger on Thursday that such legal battles over abortion are “extremely disappointing, and we shouldn’t be playing politics with people’s health care.”
“It’s really incredibly important that the federal government act on this,” Krowinski said. “And we know that that’s most likely unable to happen, given the political dynamics in Washington, but what we can do here is everything in our power to ensure that everyone who needs access has access.”
Much of lawmakers’ deliberations over H.89 has centered on abortion access post-Roe. But during Thursday’s floor debate, Rep. Taylor Small, P/D-Winooski, who is Vermont’s first transgender state legislator, highlighted the bill’s protections for gender-affirming care.
She pointed to other state legislatures that have “passed unprincipled laws restricting parents’ ability to care for their children, and putting transgender people in harm’s way.”
“We must not let these national efforts to restrict access to legally protected health care to succeed,” Small said. “As Vermonters, we know that personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity of every individual and must not be denied or infringed upon.”
Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, who campaigned against Article 22’s passage last year, offered an ultimately unsuccessful amendment to H.89 on the House floor. That amendment would have added legal protections for doctors who refuse to perform abortions. (Many individual health care workplaces offer such “conscience protections” already.)
Donahue said that H.89 responds to the “real threats” out-of-state actors are posing to abortion care in Vermont, and that, at a minimum, those threats could have a “chilling effect” on Vermont doctors. The shield law, she said, sends the message to doctors: “We’ve got your back.”
“But Madam Speaker, there is a subgroup of providers of health care in Vermont that are left out of being told, ‘We’ve got your back.’ And those are those who do not choose to offer those services because of their own reasons of conscience,” Donahue said.
Donahue’s proposed amendment was ultimately ruled not to be germane to the original bill.