Safeguarding Reproductive Health Privacy After the Elimination of Federal Protections: Considerations for States Enacting Shield Laws

Overview

Maintaining the privacy of reproductive health information is critical for ensuring access to care, promoting open communication with providers, and preventing harm like stigma, harassment, and criminalization. This issue brief aims to support policymakers and others considering enactment of additional state-level protections. To that end, it describes the 2024 Final Rule’s protections that are no longer in effect and identifies HIPAA provisions that could leave reproductive health information vulnerable to punitive use and disclosure. It then provides a general overview of privacy-related state shield laws, analyzes how they relate to the 2024 Final Rule, and identifies considerations for enactment of additional protections, providing state law examples for others to draw from.