It's time for blue states to do a little abortion law copycatting themselves

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Republican-controlled state after Republican-controlled state is copying the Texas vigilante abortion ban, and if (when) the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, most or all abortions will be banned in 26 states. Now Democrats have a state to look to as a model: Connecticut.

The Connecticut state House has passed a bill that should have Democratic lawmakers in states like California, Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and more opening their eyes, asking for a copy, and introducing it in their states as soon as possible. HB 5414 doesn’t just ensure that people will have access to abortion in Connecticut, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern reports. Once signed into law, it will protect them from the efforts of Republicans in other states to come after them for it.

The Connecticut bill would bar state courts from enforcing out-of-state penalties against people who’ve obeyed Connecticut abortion laws. But more than that, it allows people who are sued in other states for abortions they aided or abetted in Connecticut to counter-sue. Someone tries to use Texas SB 8 or the Missouri plan to copy the Texas enforcement mechanism to prevent people from leaving the state for an abortion against a Connecticut medical provider? Boom, the Connecticut provider can sue in Connecticut for damages and attorneys’ fees.

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But it’s not just providers in Connecticut, Stern explains. “This provision applies with equal force to any individual who ‘abets’ an abortion, like a mother who takes her daughter to Connecticut to terminate a pregnancy. The new crop of vigilante laws would subject that mother to private lawsuits. Under HB 5414, she could countersue in Connecticut court. If she prevails, she can collect damages and attorneys’ fees—not only the fees spent defending herself in her home state, but also the fees spent bringing suit in Connecticut.”

And no Connecticut state agency could participate in the enforcement of out-of-state abortion bans—not with investigations or subpoenas or extraditions.

It’s brilliant, and every state in which Democrats have both the governor and the state legislature, or in which a Democratic state legislature can override a Republican governor’s veto, should make it law. Unfortunately, people who cannot afford to travel to other states will still be deeply harmed by vigilante bans. But the Missouri bill trying to block people from leaving the state for abortions was squarely aimed at neighboring Illinois. It only makes sense for Illinois to take up a version of HB 5414. Idaho passed a copy of SB 8, increasing the amount vigilantes could pursue from the $10,000 of the Texas law to $20,000. Idaho’s neighbors, Oregon and Washington, should be in a race to see which can pass a Connecticut-style law first. Few of Texas’s neighbors are likely to do anything but pass their own punitive abortion bans, but New Mexico has possibilities. Colorado, just through the Oklahoma panhandle from Texas, recently put the rights of Roe v. Wade into state law. Why not take the next step?

Creating abortion sanctuary states won’t reach everyone—far from it, in an economy in which paying just the cost of an abortion and getting a single day off work is a hardship for many. But Democrats need to have strategies to combat Republican efforts to extend their bans into states where abortion is legal. Connecticut’s HB 5414 is an important tool in that fight.

Missouri Republican bill would block the option of leaving the state for an abortion

Posted in Independent News