New abortion protections, legal services coming to CT

Promising to “build a firewall” against the nationwide conservative campaign to prohibit reproductive rights, Tong will also appoint a new special counsel for reproductive rights in his office’s Civil Rights Unit to safeguard abortion access and reproductive care in Connecticut and nationwide.

“This is about law enforcement,” Tong said. “Enforcing the law of the state of Connecticut, right? And we’re going to put muscle behind that law enforcement, making sure that patients and providers are protected. Today is about making sure what our priorities are.”

Safety, access, affordability and protecting patients from prosecution, civil suits and professional sanctions are the main goals, in addition to a shopping list of possible legislation for the next General Assembly, especially targeting the high mortality rate for Black women in Connecticut, as well as deceptive advertising for so-called crisis pregnancy centres, advocates said.

The Connecticut-based lawyers will join a New York State advice system already in place at 212-899-5567. “It is an army of lawyers,” Tong said, crediting New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Abused women who want to assure their personal privacy, students and foreign-born women elements of the state’s law and other women in a variety of circumstances were encouraged to use the hotline, which will supplement the 1-877-282-4642 number for the Connecticut Choice hotline.

Joshua Perry, the state’s solicitor general who has reviewed state law and written a extended memo about the legal world after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, said women in all walks of life need clarity and information about rights and what they mean in practice for in-state residents and visitors. He said that privacy rights, codified in the state Constitution, are important. “They also say abortion is part of a continuum of maternal health care,” Perry told reporters, stressing that gynecological and obstetric services are another issue in the broader set of rights.

Zari Watkins, chief operating officer for Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, said that since last September, when Texas curtailed abortion rights, about 75 women from out of state have come to Connecticut from outside New England, New York and New Jersey, for abortions . Since the state’s safe harbor legislation took effect on July 1, more providers are being trained, but there remains a two-week delay for abortion services. At least one patient came to Connecticut from 1,500 miles away, she said.

“In a country with one of the worse maternal mortality rates in the world, Black women will be hit the hardest by these vicious attacks on bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom,” Watkins said.

State Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, co-chairwoman of the legislature’s budget-writing Appropriations Committee, said she is offended by the national campaign restricting abortion rights, which amounts to an assault on the power of women that was a major part of the civil rights struggle in her lifetime.

“We want people to have the authority to decide what they do with their bodies, where they live, where they are educated and where they work,” she said. “This is just a small thing that could be pushing us back 20, 30 and 40 years. We fought too hard to get here. Women should be outraged by this. As a Black woman, I am continuously hearing the same thing over and over again: ‘This is going to protect your community.’ No it’s not. It’s taking away from my community. It’s an assault on people in varying ways.”

Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, a leading lawmaker who advocated the safe harbor law, warned that there is evidence that anti-abortion activists could use data from crisis intervention centers to invade the privacy of pregnant women. “There are more crisis intervention centers than there are Planned Parenthoods here in the state of Connecticut,” Gilchrest said, recalling in recent years state legislation banning deceptive advertising.

Protecting data privacy will be a goal for the next General Assembly, which meets in January, she said, noting that while reproductive rights are being cut back in many states, more people from around the country have been seeking advice from Connecticut lawmakers. “There are many states who are looking to us and the protections that we enacted, so individuals coming to the state of Connecticut to seek an abortion, may be given a house to stay in, or the provider who provides the abortion.” Gilchrest said.

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