A sweeping bill intended to guarantee access to abortion and gender-affirming care cleared its first legislative hurdle Monday after a tense discussion that foreshadowed future charged debate in the full Legislature.
House Bill 2002 is a top priority for legislative Democrats, who pledged to do everything in their power to protect abortion rights after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the national right to abortion last summer. The measure is a top target for Republicans, who have panned it as too extreme.
The measure would protect doctors and other health care providers from losing their licenses or facing other repercussions for providing abortions or gender-affirming care. It would also bar Oregon courts from issuing subpoenas or otherwise helping other states prosecute people who provided care that complies with Oregon laws.
It comes as the Idaho Legislature passed a measure that would criminalize transporting minors to receive abortions in other states and allow civil lawsuits against abortion providers in other states, including Oregon. Idaho Gov. Brad Little has yet to sign or veto the measure.
The House Committee on Behavioral Health and Health Care advanced the bill on a 6-5 vote Monday evening, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.
Supporters including committee chair Rob Nosse, D-Portland, described it as a way to further the state’s values.
“In Oregon, as it has been pointed out, we have supported and protected our family and our friends and their right to these services,” Nosse said. “And we’re going to continue to do that.”
Oregon already does more than any other state to protect access to abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that tracks reproductive rights policies. Fourteen states, including Idaho, now ban abortion in nearly all circumstances.
A July 2022 survey found that 72% of Oregonians believed abortion should be legal in most or all cases, though support is higher for abortions earlier in a pregnancy. Oregon voters have repeatedly rejected attempts to limit abortion access, most recently by voting down a proposed ban on public funds being used for abortions in 2018, and political analysts suspect the Supreme Court’s decision helped elect Gov. Tina Kotek and Democratic legislative majorities.
“Oregonians have been very, very clear throughout the entirety of my life that they support access to abortion, and I think we should be alarmed about what’s happening in other states,” said Rep. Ben Bowman, D-Tigard. “Abortion and gender-affirming care are a political football in other states, fundamental rights being stripped away from people, and to me this bill is about saying Oregon is not going to do that and that we’re going to continue to offer these fundamental rights.”
The measure would require the state’s Medicaid program and private insurers to cover a range of reproductive and gender-related services, including laser hair removal, tracheal shaves and facial feminization surgery for transgender women. It would allow minors to receive information about reproductive health care and some services, including contraception and abortions, without parental permission, though children younger than 15 could not be sterilized. And it reiterates requirements to cover abortion and reproductive health care.
A 2017 state law requires the Oregon Health Plan and private insurers to cover abortion and other reproductive care at no cost to patients, though recent reports have shown that at least a dozen insurance companies failed to cover those services. Secretary of State Shemia Fagan earlier this spring announced a statewide audit of abortion’s accessibility within the next year.
The new bill also would make it a crime to interfere with medical facilities, such as by blocking patients from entering or leaving or jamming up telephone lines with spam calls. It wouldn’t infringe on the right to protest, including protests outside abortion or gender clinics.
And it would create a grant program for rural reproductive health clinics, though it doesn’t specify the size of those grants.
The committee’s Democratic majority rejected amendments proposed by Republicans, including attempts to revive two bills introduced by House Republican Leader Vikki Breese-Iverson to create a state-run hotline to direct pregnant women seeking abortions to organizations that would encourage them to continue pregnancies. (The state set up an abortion hotline in January to explain patient rights.)
The majority also rejected a proposed amendment from Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Stayton, to require that people who detransition from being transgender receive the same care as those who transition. Christina Milano, the cofounder and medical director of Oregon Health & Science University’s Transgender Health Program, said during a hearing last month that coverage would already include people who seek to transition back to their original gender.
Diehl has been the most outspoken opponent of the bill, marshaling parents and people who regretted their transitions to speak against it. In a testy exchange with Nosse near the end of the meeting, he repeatedly called Nosse “uninformed,” while Nosse retorted that Diehl was “wrong.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Chair, you are uninformed, and you’re going to live to regret these decisions that have been made,” Diehl said.
Rep. Lily Morgan, R-Grants Pass, said she opposed letting young girls obtain abortions without parental knowledge. Doctors who addressed the committee have said they still try to involve parents in children’s care, though there are cases such as familial abuse where it’s not safe to do so.
“I am that child that would have been aborted,” Morgan said. “My mom was 17 when she was pregnant with me and went to the health department, and they said there’s no reason for you to have a child at 17, unwed, and I’m grateful she chose to keep me.”
Rep. Maxine Dexter, a Portland Democrat and physician, said as she voted for the bill that she trusts doctors and patients to make the right decisions. Oregon needs to protect their right to do so because other states are chipping away at those rights, she said.
“Politics does not belong in an exam room,” Dexter said.
The measure now heads to the budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee, then to the full House for a vote.
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