In a move that places Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell at the forefront of a multi-state campaign, she has partnered with 19 other attorneys general calling on the American Medical Association (AMA) to enact stronger protections for abortion and gender-affirming care providers facing board certification risks. This coalition has submitted testimony to the AMA, highlighting the danger of requiring these health care providers to travel to states with legal restrictions on the care they provide for in-person board certification exams, as reported by mass.gov.
Attorneys general argue that the current requirement places medical professionals in a precarious position where they risk legal and physical harm, and despite the AMA's policy adoption earlier this year encouraging medical boards to provide alternative testing options, Campbell and her cohort maintain it stops short of providing substantive policy guidance for specialty boards on steps to protect exam candidates, demanding immediate action. “As threats against providers of abortion and gender affirming care continue to escalate, it is incumbent upon all of us to double down on our efforts to champion, defend and protect the medical professionals who provide this essential health care,” AG Campbell expressed in the coalition's testimony, according to mass.gov.
Remedial actions proposed by this legal assembly include relocating testing sites to states without such prohibitive laws, shifting to remote testing methods, or allowing individual exemptions, particularly emphasizing the American Board of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ABOG), which still mandates in-person exams in Texas despite the state's stringent anti-abortion and anti-transgender laws; this concern arises even though remote administration of these exams was proven viable during the COVID-19 pandemic. The coalition condemns ABOG's intransigence, fearing for providers who may face prosecution or physical harm in Texas.
Within the shadow of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, states have aggressively pursued anti-abortion and anti-transgender legislation, with intentions to exert pressure on reproductive health and gender-affirming care providers becoming increasingly overt and the attorneys argue that these moves are designed to intimidate providers into abandoning their practice or face severe consequences; the testimony joined by AG Campbell, and her counterparts from states like New York and California including a conglomeration of others from across the nation, stands as a unified front against these incursions.
AG Campbell, together with the attorneys general of states including New York, California, Colorado, and others, continue to implore the AMA to align more closely with their protective stance, seeking to guard those on the front lines of reproductive and gender-affirming health care from undue risk. The effort demonstrates a clear-cut desire to uphold safety, legal security and facilitate accessibility to vital medical services through concerted legal advocacy and well-reasoned policy recommendations.
