BOSTON (LifeSiteNews) – Massachusetts Democrat Gov. Maura Healey signed an updated shield law to make it even harder for out-of-state law enforcement to stop Massachusetts physicians from acting across state lines to help other states’ residents get around restrictions on abortion and gender transitions.
An enhancement to a previously enacted law, the Shield Act 2.0 more explicitly authorizes abortions for supposed “medical necessity” and bans state and local authorities from cooperating with federal or out-off-state officials on investigations pertaining to any “health” services that are legal in Massachusetts.
It also declares that the names of “individuals engaged in the provision, facilitation or promotion of reproductive health care services” or “gender-affirming health care services shall not be considered a public record,” meaning they would not have to be shared with law enforcement counterparts and could be left off the labels of abortion pills shipped to other states.
“Massachusetts will always be a state where patients can access high-quality health care and providers are able to do their jobs without government interference,” Healey said. “From the moment Roe was overturned, we stepped up to pass strong protections for patients and providers, and with President Trump and his allies continuing their assaults on health care, we’re taking those protections to the next level. No one is going to prevent the people of Massachusetts from getting the health care they need.”
“Mifepristone kills unborn children, and in as many as one in 10 cases, causes adverse medical complications for the women who use it,” responded CJ Doyle, executive director of the Catholic League of Massachusetts. “This measure is a legislative license for Bay State abortionists to violate the laws of other American states while being shielded from any criminal prosecution, civil liability or professional discipline.”
Twelve states currently ban all or most abortions, but the abortion lobby continues to work feverishly preserve “access” through a variety of means, most prominently deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, enabling the abortion industry to shift much of its business focus from surgical abortions to mailing abortion pills into states where abortion is illegal, to be taken in the privacy of one’s home with no medical oversight.
Such abortions are effectively impossible to prevent without preventing the pills from being mailed out in the first place. Yet several pro-abortion states have enacted “shield laws” forbidding cooperation with out-of-state law enforcement attempting to enforce pro-life laws. According to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, “22 states and the District of Columbia have some level of shield law protection related to reproductive health or gender-affirming care,” eight of which “extend protections to telehealth provision.”
In response to this problem, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin recently led 15 of his counterparts in a letter to the leaders of both parties in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, urging Congress to take action against shield laws. Yet despite shield laws highlighting the practical difficulty of leaving abortion policy to individual states, President Donald Trump and Republican leaders beholden to him have been averse to further federal intervention on the subject.
