California just gave medication abortion providers—including mail-order pharmacies—and patients a powerful new tool: privacy.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 260 into law on Oct. 3, allowing doctors and pharmacies to dispense mifepristone confidentially, in packaging that may remove information about who prescribed it or who’s taking it.
The new law, which took effect immediately, permits prescribers and pharmacies to omit the name of the patient, the name of the prescriber, or the name and address of the pharmacy. California’s legislation breaks new ground, creating robust protections for patients and providers facing potential criminal investigations, prosecutions and civil lawsuits from states where abortion is banned—in addition to protection from antiabortion threats. Authored by Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, the bill doesn’t just protect abortion access—it actively dismantles the infrastructure of intimidation that anti-choice activists have built to terrorize providers and track patients across state lines.
It’s a recognition that in America in 2025, confidentiality can be the difference between accessing care and being forced into pregnancy.
“California understands that when people are afraid to get the prescriptions they need, it creates a public health risk,” said Natalie Birnbaum, state legal and policy director at the Reproductive Health Initiative for Telehealth Equity and Solutions (RHITES). “The California law goes a step further to allow patients the choice to remove their name from a label. The priority of public health overrides putting a person’s name on a label if they choose not to. The ability to remove the patient’s name is just one layer of protection that can protect patients from abusive partners or any other individuals who may weaponize a patient’s private healthcare information against them.”
The California law also enhances protections for prescribers and mail-order pharmacies. New York, Maine, Vermont, Washington and Massachusetts permit prescribers to remove their individual name from a prescription label and instead use the name of a practice or an alternative identifier. Now, prescribers and pharmacies in California can omit pharmacies’ names, including prescribers from other states. The law is a game-changer for prescribers across the country who use California mail-order pharmacies to dispense abortion medication to their patients nationwide.
The law requires pharmacists to keep a confidential log of identifying information, but here’s the crucial safeguard: that log can only be accessed by California law enforcement through a subpoena. Out-of-state entities, including out-of-state law enforcement, are explicitly barred from seeing it.
The Reality of Legal Attacks
Currently, one in four abortions is obtained via telehealth, half of which are in states with abortion bans or harsh restrictions. Identifying patients, pharmacies and prescribers in order to criminally prosecute or civilly sue them has become central in the conflict between states with abortion providers and states with abortion bans. AB 260 is a response to high-profile attempts by conservative states targeting providers of telehealth abortion and their patients. Several states have shield laws to protect patients and prescribers, but arguably no other state law is as comprehensive as California’s new confidentiality provisions.
Most recently, a California provider was sued in federal court in Texas by a Galveston man named Jerry Rodriguez, alleging that the physician violated Texas law and the Comstock Act by mailing abortion medication to his estranged girlfriend. Rodriguez is seeking more than $75,000 in damages and a court injunction against the medication provider not just for himself, but for “all current and future fathers of unborn children in the United States.” He is being represented by attorney Jonathan Mitchell, known for his work on Texas’ “bounty hunter” abortion law, which allows private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.
High-profile lawsuits in Louisiana and Texas also illustrate the problem and the danger for abortion providers. Both are states with total abortion bans in effect and no rape, incest or fatal fetal anomaly exceptions. Louisiana was the first state to criminally prosecute a doctor for shipping abortion medications across state lines. Dr. Maggie Carpenter, a New York state doctor, was indicted on felony charges for mailing abortion medications to Louisiana and a mother was indicted alongside the doctor for allegedly receiving the pills and giving them to her daughter, a minor. Using shield laws, New York is refusing to extradite Dr. Carpenter to Louisiana.
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Dr. Carpenter in civil court for mailing medications into Texas. In a landmark legal decision, the Texas state court issued a default judgment of $100,000 when Carpenter did not respond to the suit and ordered her to stop providing abortion pills to women in Texas. The New York county clerk is refusing to file the judgment against the doctor. The case is expected to reach the Supreme Court.
These cases represent everything wrong with our post-Dobbs reality: men weaponizing the courts to control women’s bodies, anti-choice vigilantes reaching across state lines to impose their ideology, and the assault on the privacy of the patient-provider relationship.
All of these cases are part of a new effort to challenge the legality of telehealth abortions and test the effectiveness of shield laws that protect abortion providers. California’s new confidentiality law gives patients, “an additional layer of security and safety to get the care they choose and in a way that works for them, safe from abusive partners or others,” said Birnbaum.
Additional Protections Against Federal Restrictions
AB 260 extends protections for abortion medications as well. In a provision that’s nothing short of prescient, the law mandates that California-regulated health plans must cover mifepristone regardless of changes to its FDA approval status.
This matters because the Trump administration’s FDA is currently reviewing mifepristone—a review announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary in September. The outcome could result in the limitation or prohibition of the use of telehealth for medication abortion and restrict the availability of mifepristone nationwide.
California’s message is clear: Despite the federal government’s assault on science, our patients will have access to safe, effective medications.
AB 260 also strengthens legal protections for healthcare providers against criminal prosecution and professional discipline for simply doing their jobs—prescribing, transporting, dispensing or handling abortion medication.
The need for shield laws acknowledges an ugly truth: In post-Roe America, providing abortion care is an act of courage that can invite legal retaliation, harassment or worse. By shielding providers from out-of-state lawsuits and unfounded disciplinary actions, California is saying that doctors shouldn’t have to choose between their licenses and their patients’ well-being.
AB 260 provides unprecedented protections for pharmacists, shielding them from criminal, civil or professional penalties—and preventing the California State Board of Pharmacy from denying licensure or taking disciplinary action—when they manufacture, transport or otherwise handle mifepristone or other medication abortion drugs. These safeguards are among the strongest in the country for pharmacists.
What This Means for the Movement
AB 260 is the latest addition to California’s commitment to reproductive freedom, which includes stockpiling abortion medication, enshrining reproductive rights in the state constitution, and creating the Reproductive Freedom Alliance—a coalition of 23 governors committed to protecting abortion access.
As Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California CEO Jodi Hicks noted, “Trump’s administration and Republican members of Congress continue to attack reproductive healthcare access on all fronts and already successfully defunding all 109 Planned Parenthood health centers in California.”
AB 260 is California’s answer: If you’re going to attack us, we’re going to make ourselves difficult to target.
For patients, the law means something simpler but no less profound: the ability to access abortion care without fear. Without worrying that you are being surveilled. Without fear that your name will end up in a lawsuit—or worse. Without wondering if your pharmacist will be harassed for filling your prescription.
AB 260 offers a blueprint for other pro-choice states: confidential prescriptions, coverage mandates that bypass FDA approval, and explicit protections against out-of-state legal overreach. These are strategies that can be replicated anywhere legislators are serious about protecting providers and the reproductive privacy that patients once took for granted. Laws making it more difficult to criminally prosecute or civilly sue abortion providers and patients are now necessary to protect our rights. In the time it takes to read this article, a provider in California could be writing a prescription with confidential labeling that will reach a patient without exposing either of them to the harassment, doxxing or punishments that have become routine in red states post-Roe.
Great Job Teresa Cisneros Burton & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
