Reproductive Equity Now Senior Policy & Programs Director Testifies on Legislation Updating Massachusetts Shield Law

WATCH HERE: “Massachusetts must step in,” says Teylouni

BOSTON  (JUNE 3, 2025) – Yesterday, Reproductive Equity Now’s Senior Director of Policy and Programs, Claire Teylouni, testified before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary during a public hearing in support of S.2522, An Act strengthening health care protections in the Commonwealth. You can find this testimony, as prepared for delivery, below. 

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Oral Testimony

June 3, 2025

Reproductive Equity Now Testimony in Support of S.2522

Claire Teylouni, Senior Director of Policy and Programs

Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary

**as prepared for delivery**

Chair Edwards, Chair Day, and members of the Committee,

My name is Claire Teylouni, and I am honored to testify this afternoon in support of S.2522 on behalf of Reproductive Equity Now. 

As you have heard from many advocates today, S.2522 is a comprehensive piece of legislation that seeks to update the best-in-the-nation shield protections this legislature passed mere weeks after the Dobbs decision nearly three years ago. 

In that time, and in the first five months of the new, hostile federal administration, we have seen extremists emboldened to accelerate their anti-abortion playbook to roll back reproductive health care access. This playbook – commonly known as Project 2025, a literal playbook written by former Trump Administration officials, is extremely clear in the ways it seeks to dismantle abortion access. One such way is to undermine so-called “distorted pro-abortion interpretations” in federal law, known as EMTALA, which requires hospitals to provide emergency, stabilizing treatment, long interpreted to be inclusive of emergency abortion care, for patients presenting at the hospital with pregnancy complications, and co-opt this decades-old law to instead investigate doctors who provide emergency abortion care. With this in mind, I want to use my testimony today to highlight the critical provisions of S.2522 that establish state-level EMTALA protections. 

Efforts to undermine access to this emergency care are already underway with the Trump Administration’s move in March to dismiss Moyle v. Idaho, the litigation challenging Idaho’s interpretation of its own state law banning abortion, in which they argue it supersedes federal law requiring emergency intervention when pregnancy complications require abortion care. This dismissal was telling and clear evidence that the Trump Administration does not plan to enforce EMTALA as it relates to pregnant people in emergencies, which we have confirmed today with CMS’s announcement that they are rescinding the guidance at the heart of this litigation.

The bottom line here is that the Trump Administration’s goals to undermine abortion access - including access to emergency abortion care – are clear, and Massachusetts must step in to ensure that this care is protected at our hospitals. 

Thank you. 

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