Healthcare professionals in Massachusetts who provide abortion and gender-affirming care are applauding a move by the state Senate to protect them and their patients from out-of-state lawsuits.
With the Supreme Court appearing likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion, states including Texas and Oklahoma have enacted laws that would allow lawsuits against people who receive abortions, as well as against the clinics that provide that care.
Those laws also target transgender people seeking gender-affirming care, and the healthcare providers who treat them.
In a budget amendment that passed Wednesday, the state Senate provided a range of protections for healthcare providers and patients in Massachusetts from out-of-state actions. Those include barring the extradition of patients or providers to states where they face lawsuits, preventing law enforcement in the state from assisting those investigations and protecting healthcare professionals from facing threats to their medical licenses.
"I'm very grateful that Massachusetts is being so proactive to protect providers like myself in allowing us to provide safe and legal abortion care," said Dr. Luu Ireland, a practicing OBGYN and abortion provider at UMass Memorial Medical Center and Planned Parenthood.
"When I am with a patient, my sole focus is taking care of the person in front of me, hearing her story and figuring out how I can provide her with the medical care she needs and deserves," Ireland told GBH News. "And the last thing that I want to have to consider is where she's coming from and legal implications, when I am providing safe and legal medical care in the state of Massachusetts."
Ireland said she was glad to see the Senate's amendment protect providers from ramifications to their medical licenses.
"I work really hard to be a good physician and keep up a good clinical reputation," she said. "And the idea that all of that could be sacrificed in the setting of providing legal abortion care in my home state because of what Texas or Oklahoma thinks I should or shouldn't do for their citizens is really frustrating and infuriating."
"We're in uncharted territory here," said Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of the local reproductive rights advocacy group Reproductive Equity Now. "It should be, on its face, unconstitutional that anyone in a state like Missouri or Texas could sue a provider for lawful care provided here in the commonwealth. But we just don't know what the court's going to do."
Hart Holder said she believes the language in the Senate amendment would act as a deterrent to lawsuits from out-of-state because it would give standing for counter-lawsuits.
The Senate amendment was also applauded by healthcare professionals who provide gender-affirming care to transgender patients.
"I'm thrilled that in Massachusetts, our Senate stood up for frontline workers and providers to make sure that they could protect the incredibly important work we do for LGBTQ+ patients," said Steve Kerrigan, president and CEO of Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center, which runs community practices that offer transgender health care in Worcester, Framingham and Milford.
"We are prepared to care for patients from anywhere in the country who feel threatened and whose rights are threatened when it comes to gender affirming care and appropriate care for our LGBTQ+ friends and family," Kerrigan said. "To me, no one in Mississippi or Alabama or anywhere has the right to say the type of care that we provide to the patients that we serve. They shouldn't have the right to sue our providers for providing care."
The Senate's budget amendment will be negotiated with the House, and could land on the governor's desk in the coming weeks.
Kerrigan is hopeful the amendment will become law.
"The Senate has done the right thing," he said. "I believe the House of Representatives and the speaker will do the right thing. And I have all the confidence in the world that Governor Baker will sign these protections into law, because he understands that the people of Massachusetts should not have the work that they do dictated to by people from Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, or anywhere else."
