House Bill 5414, passed by the Connecticut General Assembly and signed into law by that U.S. state's Governor, Ned Lamont, on May 5, 2022, as the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act, is intended to protect abortion in the state and expand the procedure's availability. Several of its provisions are responses to the Texas Heartbeat Act, passed in late 2021 and since emulated by two other states, that would prevent enforcement in Connecticut of judgements obtained by lawsuits filed under those laws against abortion providers, patients and those who facilitate them. It also allows more non-physician providers to perform certain types of abortions, codifying a past legal opinion. The law took effect July 1.
The bill was introduced in March by Rep. Matt Blumenthal, a member of the state House from the Democratic Party, which strongly supports abortion rights nationally and enjoys a trifecta in Connecticut, with majority control of both houses of the legislature and the governor's office. Five weeks later it was passed by the House with support from most Democrats and some members of the Republican minority; the state Senate followed 10 days later. In both chambers' debates some Black female Democratic members voted in opposition; while they knew the bill would pass, they spoke of their frustration with the lack of any birth control options for young women in their communities besides abortion and the unsavory past they associated with the procedure. Lamont had promised he would sign the bill; during the week after its passage, a draft majority opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court's then pending Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which as it did when handed down at the end of June overturned Roe v. Wade, its 1973 decision striking down most state abortion laws, was leaked and published, giving the bill greater urgency for its supporters.
Background
Texas
Anti-abortion legislators in Texas, where Roe had originally been filed, and other states had been trying for several years to pass "heartbeat" bills that would ban all abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually within six weeks of conception. This conflicts with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a successor case to Roe, which had held that the state can regulate abortion prior to viability, roughly twice that time, only to the extent necessary to protect the health of the patient, and accordingly federal courts have barred enforcement of those laws.
In March 2021, Texas's Senate Bill 8, another heartbeat bill, allowing no exceptions even for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, was introduced with provisions designed to prevent pre-enforcement injunctions: it allowed enforcement only through private lawsuits by private citizens who were not government employees. Since only state officials can be sued to prevent enforcement of an allegedly unconstitutional law, its supporters expected it to survive a facial court challenge.
In May of that year it passed both houses of the legislature and was signed into law by governor Greg Abbott as the Texas Heartbeat Act. On September 1 it went into effect. Lawsuits were filed in state and federal court to block it. The former resulted in a December ruling that held portions of the bill in violation of the Texas Constitution but declined to enjoin its enforcement.
The federal action, Whole Women's Health v. Jackson, sought to block enforcement before its effective date by naming several court clerks and judges as defendants on the grounds that, as state officials, they would play a role in enforcing the law. The motion for a preliminary injunction reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that the plaintiffs lacked standing as no actual suit against an abortion provider had yet been brought. On remand to the Fifth Circuit of Appeals, the Texas Supreme Court was asked to certify whether state medical licensing officials could be named as defendants since they might have the power to enforce sanctions against providers accused of violating the law. It said the law prohibited those officials from doing so, and without any defendants, the suit had to be dismissed.