Connecticut’s legislative Public Health Committee voted to draft and propose a bill that would offer legal protections for medical providers who make referrals for or perform emergency abortions in Connecticut.
“The bill that we intend to raise is going to be very familiar,” said Committee Co-Chair Rep. Cristin McCarthy-Vahey (D-Fairfield) at the Committee’s meeting on Monday, Feb. 9. “This will protect providers of reproductive health care [from] discipline if they are just providing counseling, referral for any treatment, and if they’re just providing emergency care when necessary.”
Components of Senate Bill 7 in 2025, or “An Act Concerning Protections for Access to Health Care and the Equitable Delivery of Health Care Services in the State,” were passed by the legislature, including regulations on fluoridated water and the creation of a public health advisory committee. The new bill that McCarthy-Vahey proposes for this legislative session will reintroduce Sections Three and 12 of Senate Bill 7, which were cut from the final version of the bill.
“As is the case with many of the bills that we hear, we come back to those conversations sometimes,” McCarthy-Vahey said. “Senate bill 7 had a large number of really important and significant initiatives, so we’re just bringing back this conversation to be able to continue and hopefully follow through on that this year.”
Even though the item discussed at Monday’s meeting is titled “An Act Concerning Reproductive Rights,” Section Three contained information about “gender-affirming care,” or care for gender dysphoria and “gender incongruence.”
Section Three states that, “No health care entity shall limit the ability of a health care provider who is acting in good faith, within the health care provider’s scope of practice, education, training and experience, including the health care provider’s specialty area of practice and board certification” from providing certain types of “reproductive health care services and gender-affirming health care services.”
Section 12 of the proposed bill allows any person who was harmed by certain provisions in the bill, including Section Three, to take civil action against a hospital or health care entity within 180 days of the “occurrence of the violation.”
When Sen. Heather Somers (R-Groton) asked if this proposed item would change any of the wording or content of the bill introduced last year, Committee Co-Chair Sen. Saud Anwar (D-South Windsor) told her that the language would be discussed once the bill was raised. Sommers said that it did not answer her question. She voted in favor of the item anyway.
The item was passed by the committee with 23 members voting in favor of it. Six members were not present during the vote, and only Republican Representatives Lezlye Zupkus, Karen Reddington-Hughes, and Tracy Marra voted against it.
The six members who were absent from the meeting had until 2 p.m. to cast their vote. Those votes were not made public immediately after the deadline.
This was the only item raised during the meeting that did not have unanimous support. Most of the items were passed with minimal, if any, discussion. The only other proposed idea for a bill that was discussed in detail was an act allowing the state to amend an ongoing pilot program to study the effect of certain psychedelics on veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
This pilot program has been operating since 2022. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve the psychedelic treatments involved with the study, which is why a bill was introduced to update it, Anwar said.
The Public Health Committee’s next meeting will be on Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 11 a.m. There will be a public hearing immediately after the meeting.
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