SALT LAKE CITY — A Senate committee stripped language from a bill Tuesday that would have prohibited the electronic prescription of drugs that can induce abortion from telehealth providers.
Sen. Brian Shiozawa, R-Cottonwood Heights, said a constitutional challenge to the legislation over the abortion language could negatively impact telehealth’s overall mission.
Shiozawa, an emergency room physician, said his amendment to HB154 would “clean up the bill and preserve telehealth,” which he described as a “vital” service to caregivers in rural Utah but also to suburban emergency room physicians who rely on the expertise of specialists they do not have on their staffs.
“What I want to talk about is doctors prescribing medicine and systems that will work for patients,” he said during a hearing before the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.
If the bill were taken to court to challenge the language on abortion on constitutional grounds, telehealth would be caught in the middle, Shiozawa said.
“Once again we have an instance of legislators trying to insert themselves between doctors and patients. I don’t like that when it affects me in the ER, and I’m sure the OB-GYNs don’t like it when it affects them and the other physicians don’t like that,” he said.
Removing the language on abortion preserves other aspects of the legislation, which is primarily related to reimbursement for telemedicine services.
The language prohibiting the prescription of abortion-inducing medications through electronic prescription renders it “a policy issue, not a medical issue. I think we’re confusing those,” Shiozawa said.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, resisted the amendment.
“This is a policy decision, of course it is. Everything we do here is a policy decision. That’s what we do here,” he said.
The language was intended to address the risks of chemical abortions, which can be riskier than surgical procedures, said Ivory, an attorney.
When put to a vote of the committee, Shiozawa's amendment passed on a vote of 6-2.
The committee, which held the bill Monday to allow more time for public testimony, then voted to send the amended bill to the Senate for its consideration.