BOSTON — Massachusetts representatives took their latest step Wednesday to protect access to abortions, other reproductive health services and gender-affirming care with unanimous approval of a location data shield bill. One day after top Democrats unveiled the proposal, the House voted 159-0 on legislation that would bar cell phone carriers, data providers and other companies from collecting or selling location information involving reproductive and gender-affirming health care. Supporters pitched the bill (H 4844) as a response to growing anti-abortion and transphobic movements in other states, empowered by the U.
S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision that ended the federal right to an abortion. By limiting data collection and sale, they said, Massachusetts can protect patients – both its own residents and those who travel here – against harassment or legal consequences for seeking care.
“Today, more than one in three women of reproductive age lives in a state that has enacted an abortion ban at six weeks of pregnancy or less,” said Rep. Kate Lipper-Garabedian, a Melrose Democrat who helped lead the push for broader data-privacy legislation. “For the women and girls living in these states who do not wish to be conscripted into pregnancy, interstate travel is often a necessity, and as gut-wrenching lawsuits and firsthand accounts reveal, interstate travel has also become a necessity for countless women in those states who desperately wish to be mothers but who .
