BS"D
Rabbi Noson Shmuel Leiter,
Executive Director,
Help Rescue Our Children
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New Jersey’s Abortion Shield Bill Was Amended. So, Who Are They Really Protecting?
June 15, 2026
By Marie Tasy, Executive Director, New Jersey Right to Life
There is a particular frustration in watching a deeply flawed bill steamroll through the Legislature, driven by a blind and erratic obsession with so called “reproductive health” and with little regard for transparency, the Constitution, or the people it will affect. That is what occurred with NJ Bill A2218/S2260.
New Jersey Right to Life testified at multiple committee hearings. Throughout the process, amendments were repeatedly introduced at the last minute and withheld from the public until after testimony had concluded, preventing us the opportunity for meaningful public review and informed comment. We were even denied the ability to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the bill’s constitutionality by the committee chair.
On June 11, the bill was scheduled for an Assembly floor vote and was pulled due to constitutional concerns. Legislative leaders stripped out one of its most dangerous provisions entirely, the section that would have allowed lawsuits against individuals for causing reputational, financial, or emotional harm simply because of their connection to reproductive health care advocacy. Removing it outright was a clear admission that the objections to it were valid.
That is a win. But it is not enough.
The amended bill still creates a new crime of “interference with reproductive health care services” and still authorizes expansive criminal and civil lawsuits, punitive damages, injunctions, and attorney’s fees. It still uses language subject to interpretation, based on “feelings,” that leaves far too much room for selective enforcement against peaceful sidewalk counselors, prayer vigil participants, and others engaged in constitutionally protected activity. When asked during committee testimony by Assemblyman Jay Webber (R-26) to identify specific incidents of violence at New Jersey abortion facilities that would justify these new penalties, a Planned Parenthood representative could not name a single example.
Violence, threats, trespass, property damage, harassment, and obstruction are already illegal in New Jersey. The Legislature’s own Office of Legislative Services has confirmed the bill will increase costs for prosecutors, courts, and corrections to address a problem supporters have not documented.
Also still troubling are the immunity provisions:
• Professional licensing boards are prohibited from disciplining providers based solely on their reproductive health care activity.
• Insurance companies are barred from taking adverse action against providers who perform services on patients from states where those services are illegal.
• New Jersey law enforcement and courts are prohibited from cooperating with other states’ investigations or proceedings related to reproductive health care, even when minors are involved.
• Any law from another state seeking to prosecute someone for reproductive health care activity is declared against New Jersey public policy and cannot be applied in state courts.
These provisions raise serious concerns about accountability. New Jersey has already seen the consequences of weak cross state oversight. Steven Chase Brigham, a New Jersey abortionist, ran an illegal bi-state late term abortion operation. He would begin procedures in New Jersey and have patients drive to a secret facility in Maryland to complete them. After one botched procedure left an 18-year-old with a ruptured uterus, police discovered the bodies of 34 late term aborted babies in a freezer at the Maryland location. Brigham was charged with ten counts of murder. The charges were ultimately dropped on a jurisdictional technicality. A2218/S2260 would make exactly this kind of cross state accountability even harder.
Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist whom even the secular media called a serial killer, operated for years under lax oversight before his crimes were exposed. The lesson of both cases is the same: when accountability disappears, women and children pay the price.
So who is this bill really protecting? Not the women and young minor girls who will be exploited by traffickers, abusers, and unscrupulous providers who will use these protections to evade accountability both inside New Jersey and across state lines.
The bill raises serious questions about federalism, interstate cooperation, free speech, accountability, and the proper role of government. It deserves far more scrutiny than it has received.
The Legislature was forced to amend this bill repeatedly and ultimately remove one of its most controversial provisions after sustained public criticism. That does not happen when concerns lack merit. It happens when serious flaws are exposed.
At this point, the real question is why this legislation was introduced in the first place. New Jersey already has laws against violence, threats, trespass, harassment, and obstruction. Supporters have failed to demonstrate a need for these sweeping new protections and penalties.
New Jersey deserves laws that protect constitutional freedoms, respect accountability, and serve the public interest, not legislation designed to appease favored political constituencies and shield them from scrutiny, accountability, and make taxpayers bear the cost of enforcing new protections and penalties for a problem supporters have failed to document.
The Assembly should reject A2218/S2260 outright. This law protects no one who needs protection. It is built on definitions so deliberately broad that most New Jerseyans would be stunned to learn what they cover, and it uses those definitions to wall off an entire industry from professional discipline, legal scrutiny, and interstate accountability. When something goes wrong, and history tells us it will, there will be no cooperation, no consequences, and no one left to answer for it.
And that, for the women and children this bill leaves unprotected, is far more than a shame.
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