Virginia Senate Dems pass bill to protect health care workers from out-of-state attacks

The bill gained urgency after Louisiana recently indicted a New York doctor who sent abortion pills to a Louisiana resident.

Virginia Senate Democrats on Monday passed legislation aimed at protecting medical workers and patients from out-of-state prosecutions for legal activities in Virginia. 

The Virginia Senate passed today the Virginia Reproductive and Gender-Affirming Health Care Protection Act in a 21-19 party line vote. The goal of the bill is to protect health care workers practicing legally in Virginia from being prosecuted by other states. 

Virginia Democrats say the need for the bill arose from threats by Republican officials in states with severe abortion restrictions to go after doctors in other states who provide abortions for out-of-state patients. Those threats became a reality recently after a state grand jury in Louisiana indicted a New York doctor for sending abortion pills to a Louisiana resident. 

Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, the bill’s chief patron, said Monday on the Senate floor that lawmakers need to reassure the commonwealth’s medical community that if they are following Virginia law, then they will be protected. 

“We are increasingly seeing all across the country efforts to criminalize the work of our medical community,” Hashmi said. “We are in a position here in Virginia where our medical community is feeling the chilling effects of providing such care.”

The conservative crackdown on reproductive rights after the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade was the focus of the debate around Hashmi’s bill, but the legislation provides protections for all forms of health care that are legal in Virginia. 

Virginia Republicans opposed the bill over concerns about minors possibly getting improper medical care and questions around laws regulating telehealth. But for Democrats, the bill essentially boiled down to an affirmative defense of existing Virginia law. 

If Virginia Republicans are worried about doctors sending medicine to other states, then they should try changing the Virginia law that makes doing so legal, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said on the Senate floor. Why subject Virginians to criminal prosecution in other states for engaging in behavior that is legal in Virginia, Surovell asked.

“What this bill is about is making sure that people in Virginia – that Virginians and doctors in Virginia, nurses in Virginia, nurse practitioners in Virginia – shouldn’t go to jail for doing their job or just seeing the doctor,” Surovell said.