This story is part of CT Mirror Explains, an ongoing effort to distill our wide-ranging reporting into a "what you need to know" format and provide practical information to our readers.

This legislative session, the Connecticut General Assembly is considering measures that would expand the state’s reproductive shield law to protect those providing and receiving care through telehealth services. The Judiciary Committee heard public testimony on Senate Bill 295 last week, garnering almost 100 written testimonies, a majority of them in support of it. 

So what’s a shield law, and how would this bill impact patients receiving telehealth reproductive care and the providers giving it? Here’s what to know.

What’s a shield law? 

A shield law protects patients, providers and others involved in reproductive and gender-affirming care from legal repercussions related to that care. It protects patients and providers from being subjects of out-of-state investigations, lawsuits or other legal action for seeking or giving care to someone from a state where reproductive or gender-affirming care is illegal. 

For example, the shield laws in New York and California were invoked by those governors in denying extradition requests sent by Louisiana for two doctors in those states accused of sending abortion medication to Louisiana residents, according to written testimony provided by Liz Gustafson, Connecticut state director of Reproductive Equity Now.

Connecticut enacted the United States’ first shield law in 2022 in the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and with it, the constitutional right to an abortion. The Dobbs decision kicked abortion laws back to the states to determine on their own. 

According to the Guttmacher Institute, an organization dedicated to advancing reproductive rights, 22 states and the District of Columbia have some kind of shield law. All of them prohibit their authorities from helping other states investigate those providing or receiving reproductive care within their state.  

Connecticut’s shield law has been expanded multiple times since its passing, namely in 2023 when lawmakers passed legislation blocking state health care institutions from suspending or revoking providers’ licenses for providing reproductive and gender-affirming care that is legal in Connecticut. 

What about telehealth? 

A law passed in 2024 by the General Assembly defined telehealth in the state of Connecticut and made it a permanent feature in the Connecticut health care system.  Telehealth is health care over the phone or a computer. The law allowed Connecticut-based telehealth providers to give care to patients residing in other states. Through telehealth services, Connecticut providers can diagnose, consult and treat, educate and facilitate care management and patients’ self-management of their physical and mental health.

Last session, lawmakers attempted to expand the shield laws to telehealth providers, specifically protecting providers of reproductive and gender-affirming care “regardless of whether the patient was physically located in this state at the time the services were provided.” The bill did not pass, but it’s being revisited in the form of S.B. 295.

Of the 22 states that have shield laws, only eight states extend protections to telehealth care: California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. 

What will the proposed expansions do?

If passed, S.B. 295 would protect patients and providers involved in reproductive and gender-affirming telehealth care and allow providers to prescribe medication like abortion pills over a video call. 

The bill also says that the fact that an out-of-state patient gets telehealth reproductive or gender-affirming care from a Connecticut-based provider cannot be used as evidence against the individual, whether in a civil case, criminally or professionally. 

It further protects providers and patients by allowing them to claim, through the state, a substitute address to conduct business from in order to keep their real address private. 

The bill would also allow providers to keep their name off prescription labels. Instead, they will include just the name and address of their practice.