Abortion ‘Shield’ Laws: The Next Front In The Battle For Life

When it overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Supreme Court eliminated the biggest legal obstacle to advancing the pro-life cause. But our fight has never been a fight against Roe v. Wade. It’s a fight for life – one that is only just beginning.

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court said that regulating abortion belonged in the hands of the people and their elected representatives. Since then, nearly half the states have passed pro-life laws of different kinds – while others have doubled down on their pro-abortion policies.

Pro-abortion states and activists, however, are not content with legally protecting abortion where they live. They are now passing so-called abortion “shield” laws designed to undermine the ability of pro-life states to enforce their own laws.

Normally, states cooperate with each other when, for example, it comes to returning individuals to where they have committed crimes. This cooperation is required by the Constitution, and by multiple agreements that most states have signed.

Abortion shield laws break from that tradition, potentially causing irreparable damage to the interstate comity that has characterized the United States for so long.

But abortion shield laws also undermine traditional medical practice, which has long considered the location of medical care to be that of the patient, not the doctor.

In 2022, for example, the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), the board representing state medical and osteopathic boards, adopted a policy stating that the “practice of medicine occurs where the patient is located.” This is true, the FSMB said, even when a patient receives telemedicine: the state of care is the state in which the patient is located.

But states such as California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, and Washington have passed laws reversing this principle so that the laws of an abortionist’s state apply.

This poses extreme risks, especially now that a majority of abortions are caused by drugs rather than surgery. It allows abortionists to mail abortion drugs into pro-life states while claiming that a completely different state’s laws apply – even though women receive, use, and (in case of complications) are treated for those drugs under the laws of their home state.

Abortion advocates know this is both nonsensical and dangerous.

The primary authors of this abortion shield strategy acknowledge that “[s]tandard telehealth practice considers medical care to have occurred where the patient is located.” They also concede that “there are important reasons for defining care as occurring where the patient is located,” and that “shifting the location of care is a significant departure from the standard of care, the provisions of state medical practice acts, and the guidance of professional organizations.”

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They even admit that “the state where the patient resides typically has the strongest interest” and best means of protecting the safety of the resident patient.

Yet while abortion activists know all of this, for them, nothing comes close to matching the importance of maximizing abortion in this country. Nothing, not even protecting women’s health, can compete with killing unborn children.

Thus, they turn a blind eye while doctors prescribe and provide abortion drugs to patients they will never see in person – and whom they will not treat in the case of resulting complications.

The pro-life cause requires not only passing laws that protect the unborn but also being able to enforce those laws. These abortion shield laws have the same objective as the Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade: forcing abortion upon states that oppose it. The March for Life calls us to fight for life on these new fronts, meaning it’s not outdated – it’s more important than ever.

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Thomas Jipping is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.