Reproductive Health Legal Assistance Project (RHLAP) Reporting and Documentation Requirements - Instructions
Project Overview:
Lawyers for Good Government’s health equity and reproductive justice team seeks Goodwin Procter’s assistance in researching the current status of reporting and documentation requirements for state-level abortion laws in order to:
Empower providers with the legal information needed to confidently practice medicine while safely navigating applicable state laws;
Remove barriers to care created by uncertainty around what documentation and reporting requirements must be met in order to comply with punitive state laws; and
Assist our partner organizations and other stakeholders in assessing the current legal landscape.
The research questions listed below are intended to capture what clinicians must document and report, both to patients and to the state, when providing pregnancy termination care. All states require some degree of reporting in the provision of healthcare, but these requirements are often much more detailed, numerous, and complex in the abortion context. Uncertainty around what the law requires creates barriers to care, and in some cases, can lead to care that is otherwise legal under state law being outright denied.
L4GG launched the Policy Resource Hub in early 2023 in order to address the urgent need for clarity around the state of the law. Through the work of over 500 pro bono attorneys (including many Goodwin attorneys) and L4GG’s own in-house experts, the Hub is updated every single business day for every U.S. state and territory and verified for accuracy. It currently answers 3 questions: 1) until what point in pregnancy is abortion legal; 2) what are that state’s exceptions, exemptions and affirmative defenses to its abortion laws; and 3) what are the state’s laws relating to minors accessing abortion care. The research for this project will be used to launch a fourth question on documentation and reporting requirements.
We want to thank you in advance for your hard work on this project - without the help of our incredible pro bono attorneys, this work would not be possible.
Instructions for Participating Attorneys:
Process: You will submit your answers using this form.
Research and Project Instructions:
Prior to and During Research:
We recommend that you review all the research questions assigned to your team as listed below. These same questions will be reflected in the research form. While you are researching, we recommend that you pull the questions into a separate document for your particular state/territory, so that you are able to take notes as you research.
When starting, we recommend conducting a simple Google search of your state+abortion reporting/documentation requirements and reviewing high level information to get a baseline understanding of whether your state is restrictive, protective or somewhere in between.
Review the “Supplemental Tools and Resources” section of this document for additional background materials that you can use to guide your search.
We recommend that during the review process, you gather your findings in a Word or Google document; once you have completed your review, please copy/paste your findings into the corresponding fields below and submit this online form.
As you are researching, please check case law to determine whether a given statute is currently operative, or if it has been enjoined or otherwise blocked.
Look for coverage from reputable secondary sources. News articles can help decipher what is happening with a given law in plain terms.
Whenever discussing any laws, regulations, or cases in your responses, please provide both the Bluebook citation and link to the citation from Justia. You will likely find the citation or case in Westlaw or Lexis, but will then need to search for it in Casetext or Justia to provide a publicly available link for the dashboard.
Copy with Hyperlink: Whenever possible, please copy a link directly to the relevant section of the code you’re citing. You can do this by right clicking on text in the relevant public web page and selecting the option to “copy link to highlight,” so whoever clicks said link is brought to the exact text you highlighted, helping readers navigate text-heavy documents.
Once Research is Complete:
Once you have completed your research, please copy and paste your findings into the corresponding fields in this form.
For each answer to the research question, please include the bluebook citation and a link (preferably to Justia, if available).
Please format your answers in an easily readable way that clearly answers the question asked and includes the citations in an organized manner. Please do not include citations without context or explanation, or information without citations. Utilizing bullet points to organize different sections of your answer is perfectly fine.
Example: Question: Reporting to the State: What are your state’s requirements for reporting pregnancy termination information and statistics to the state itself?
Well-formatted Answer:
[State] requires providers to submit an annual report to the state detailing the number of abortions provided, method of termination, and demographic information for patients. [cite].
The required reporting information must be submitted on a form created by the state. [cite].
Penalties for failing to submit a timely report include xyz. [cite].
Once you submit the form, the information will automatically be sent to us.
Questions? Email Amorrison@lawyersforgoodgovernment.org.
Tools:
When conducting this research, we request your assistance to ensure that the law is accurate, up-to-date, and based on all applicable state law – all relevant statutes, any relevant regulations implementing that statute, and any relevant caselaw that might affect the meaning of the statute. We also separately request public versions of these laws, regulations, and cases so that readers of our reports (advocates, legislators, and the public) may freely and easily access the sources we cite. Please use the tools we describe below:
Your Westlaw or Lexis Account: We request that you begin all primary research in whichever subscription legal research tool you have access to and then utilize additional research tools to ensure that you are viewing the most updated version of the law.
Justia: This is a publicly available resource for the state codes of each jurisdiction. However, they do not include Westlaw or Lexis’s keycite or red flags to show if there is superseding case law.
Cornell Legal Information Institute: This is a publicly available resource of state regulations, maintained by Cornell law school.
Google Scholar: This is a publicly available resource of case law. While it is developed and maintained by Google, it is separate from a standard Google search and must be conducted from scholar.google.com and by clicking on the “case law” button.
Your state or territory’s legislative search function: each state has a search function where you can look through proposed and past legislation, generally searchable by session year and subject matter. For example: https://capitol.texas.gov/MnuSearch.aspx
Legiscan bill tracking: Useful tool for tracking the details and progress of proposed legislation (you can search individual bills)
Center for Reproductive Rights, Abortion Laws by State: This is a good starting point for reliable information about the reproductive rights landscape across the states, including a brief recitation of certain reporting requirements.
Guttmacher’s State Policy Research: Guttmacher is an excellent source for expert reproductive health research; its information is generally very accurate, but it can be outdated, so we ask that you please verify.
IMPORTANT NOTE RE: SECONDARY SOURCES: If you use secondary sources for your research, you must independently confirm that any information upon which you are relying is up to date.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
For your assigned state, please answer the following questions:
General Requirements: What must be specifically documented or reported, in a patient’s file or elsewhere, for each pregnancy termination performed in your state/territory? Please include and link all relevant citations in bluebook format. Note: Although this question is written broadly in order to capture the full scope of the law’s requirements, its answer will likely overlap with the more specific questions below.
Informed Consent: What information do providers have to share with their patients in order to satisfy your state’s informed consent laws for pregnancy termination? Please include and link all relevant citations in bluebook format.
Do informed consent requirements need to be documented in a specific place or manner?
Does your state require any specific state-created materials to be made available to a patient prior to a pregnancy termination?
Terminations Performed Pursuant to Exceptions: In order to perform an abortion under any/each of your state’s exceptions, what information must a provider document or report? Please include and link all relevant citations in bluebook format.
Does this information need to be documented in a specific place or manner, or during a specific timeframe? Research Note: The applicable laws here will differ significantly depending upon your state’s exceptions.
Ex. Many states that have a rape/incest exception require providers to document that the patient reported the crime in a specific way and within a specific time frame.
Ex. States that have exceptions for fatal fetal anomalies often require providers to document the medical basis and criteria for their determination that a patient’s diagnosis meets the state’s requirements.
Reporting to the State: What are your state’s requirements for reporting pregnancy termination information and statistics to the state itself, including details around the frequency, content, and form of such mandatory reports. Please include and link all relevant citations in bluebook format.
Is there anything else that we need to know?
Once you have completed your research, please submit your responses (with citations/links) using this online form. Thank you for contributing to this important project.