Republican Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde unveiled legislation Wednesday to repeal Washington, D.C.’s shield law, the Daily Caller News Foundation first learned.
Clyde’s D.C. Shield Law Repeal Act would repeal the D.C. Council’s Human Rights Sanctuary Amendment Act of 2022, which in part protects individuals and abortion providers from being held legally accountable in other states for engaging in or performing abortions as well as disseminating gender hormone drugs. Clyde told the DCNF in an exclusive statement that repealing D.C.’s shield law would help to “hold providers accountable for their crimes” and also “protect women, children, and the precious unborn.”
“D.C.’s shield law allows providers in our nation’s capital to deliver abortion drugs and cross gender hormones — with zero legal repercussions — to individuals in states that rightly prohibit these harmful drugs,” Clyde said. “This is a blatant, egregious effort by the Left to spread both the evils of abortion and woke gender ideology into every corner of our country.”
“Given Congress’s constitutional authority over Washington, we must repeal D.C.’s shield law to not only hold providers accountable for their crimes, but to protect women, children, and the precious unborn,” the Georgia Republican continued. “Failure to do so lets providers off the hook for undermining state laws and endangering Americans — including my constituents in Northeast Georgia.”
Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee is leading companion legislation in the Senate.
“Our nation’s capital should not be a refuge for people who take the lives of children or wreck their bodies with illegal drugs,” Lee told the DCNF in a statement. “Criminals on the lam can escape to D.C. after performing abortions in states where they are illegal, because they know DC will let them get away with it. This bill will repeal D.C.’s safe harbor for illegal abortionists and peddlers of drugs for transexual procedures, restoring the rule of law to Washington.”
Following the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, various blue states implemented shield laws aimed at safeguarding abortion providers from prosecution or extradition for violating other states’ abortion laws. Moreover, 22 states and Washington, D.C. presently have shield law protections related to abortion in place, according to UCLA Law.
By the end of 2024, one in four abortions were provided via telehealth, according to a Society of Family Planning report published in June. Additionally, an estimated 12,330 abortions were provided on average monthly under shield laws by the end of the same year, per the report.
An estimated 880 abortions were performed in D.C. in the month of December 2024 alone, according to KFF.
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