Law360 | Conn. AG Building Abortion Rights 'Firewall' With Firms' Help

By Brian Steele | Originally Published on Law360

Connecticut's Democratic attorney general has joined a multistate partnership with a pro-choice nonprofit and law firms including Silver Golub & Teitell LLP and Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder PC as part of what he described Friday as a "firewall" to protect abortion access during a second Trump administration.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, at a press conference Friday in Hartford, announced his collaboration with private practice attorneys and activists to preserve abortion access in the upcoming Trump administration. (Brian Steele | Law360)

At a press conference outside his Hartford office, flanked by activists, Attorney General William Tong announced that his office will support the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation's mission to operate and market a hotline for patients, providers and others with legal questions on the topic of abortion. Tong said Republican Donald Trump's victory in Tuesday's presidential election presented "risks and threats" to women and families.

Tong said his two daughters "are flying directly into this hurricane, where hardly a day goes by that somebody doesn't try to control their lives, make decisions for them. Not just impair their liberties or take fundamental rights away, but to do them harm. That's what this is about."

The attorney general said his staff will do "whatever they need us to do to help" the hotline, like "pushing the message out" and providing the hotline number to legislators and their aides.

The Connecticut Abortion Legal Hotline, which expands upon a hotline established in Massachusetts in January, accepts phone messages and online queries to connect people with free, confidential legal advice.

The partnership also includes the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, the Massachusetts Women's Bar Foundation, the Massachusetts chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood League, and law firms including Foley Hoag LLP, Goodwin Procter LLP, Ropes & Gray LLP, Rowthorn Law LLC, Franklin and Frankel Law, Goulston & Storrs PC and Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky & Popeo PC.

Jonathan M. Levine, a partner at Silver Golub, said in a statement that the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization , which overruled Roe v. Wade , created an "uncertain legal environment" that has left women across the country "dependent on abortion sanctuary states" to meet their healthcare needs.

"After this election, it is more important than ever that patients, medical providers and the public know the law and their legal rights to access and to provide care that is legally protected in Connecticut," Levine said.

Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now, said Friday that more attorneys are needed from all practice areas.

"We have needed help on healthcare law, on tax law, on real estate and asset protection. People who specialize in telehealth have been incredibly important," Hart Holder said. "Employment law is another one. The range of questions that we get is huge."

Tong described a recent visit he made with New York Attorney General Letitia James to a women's healthcare clinic in an underserved area of Austin, Texas, and said that even though it was "jam-packed" in 2022, they found a "lifeless" facility with no doctors, nurses or patients.

"There is, in this country now, a war on American women and patients, and if there is a war — and there is — Texas is the front," Tong said. "Mississippi is the front. Florida. Louisiana. And on the front, healthcare for women is closed, abandoned, shuttered. Gone."

Connecticut allows for abortion until fetal viability, then restricts the procedure to situations where the life or health of the mother is at risk. Tong's office has joined in federal litigation in the Fourth Circuit and the Eastern District of Washington to defend access to the abortion pill mifepristone, and state lawmakers in 2022 passed the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act to shield patients and providers from out-of-state litigation or extradition.

Those efforts, along with the new hotline, are part of what Tong described as an abortion rights "firewall" in the Constitution State, but he acknowledged that the outcomes of legal efforts have been "a mixed bag." He said his office "fought as hard as we could" to protect Roe v. Wade.

"Roe fell because of Donald Trump. Let's just be clear about that," he said.

Tong said he and his wife "have had complicated pregnancies, and when I read about women in Texas dying now, left for dead in hospital parking lots, because they can't get routine care, healthcare, a [dilation and curettage] when they have a miscarriage, or they're in the middle of a miscarriage, in the process of bleeding out, I think of my wife, and in a different time and place, what would have happened to us?"

Abortion laws in the U.S. are a confusing "mess," Hart Holder said, but the hotline will help patients and providers identify their specific legal rights and remedies.

"This hotline will be a lifeline in a second hostile Trump administration," she said. "Information is power, and to put information in the hands of patients and providers is to fight back."

Christopher Mattei, partner at Koskoff Koskoff, said the firm's attorneys have always "stood up for the rights and liberties of all people, especially the most vulnerable."

"Our partnership in this effort is part of Koskoff's long-standing commitment to advocate for safety in women's healthcare," Mattei said in a statement.

Perry Rowthorn, Rowthorn Law's founder and a former Connecticut chief deputy attorney general, said in a statement that he is "grateful to Attorney General Tong, his team, and the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation for their commitment to the protection of reproductive rights and for making this important legal resource available to the public."