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. Under the Biden Administration, the federal government sought to protect reproductive health privacy by issuing a new rule under HIPAA with additional protections, but this rule was eliminated by a federal court in 2025. This issue brief aims to support policymakers and others considering enactment of state-level protections to safeguard reproductive privacy in response to the elimination of these federal protections. To that end, it describes the federal protections that are no longer in effect and identifies HIPAA provisions that could leave reproductive health information vulnerable to punitive use and disclosure.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 eliminated federal protections , and identifies considerations for enactment of additional protections, providing state law examples for others to draw from.