A chapter amendment to legislation passed earlier this year was passed in late March by the state Assembly by a 96-51 vote, with Assemblyman Andrew Molitor, R-Westfield, and Assemblyman Joe Sempolinski, R-Olean, voting against it. A companion bill (S.4587) was approved 40-21 with Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, voting against it. The chapter amendment has been signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The chapter amendment allows a dispensing practitioner to print the address of their practice, rather than their own name or their practice’s name, on the prescription label for mifepristone or misoprostol.

The amendment also requires a health care prescriber who has requested to include the name or address of the practice rather than the doctor’s name notify their patient that the doctor’s name won’t be on the prescription.

“Unfortunately, you have people who are not the patient who have no business meddling in people’s individual health care choices trying to weaponize some unfortunate laws against prescribers and against individuals who are availing themselves of health care,” Assemblywoman Karines Reyes, D-Bronx, sponsor of the Assembly chapter amendment during floor debate.

Assemblywoman Karines Reyes speaks during a news conference in mid-March in Albany.

Both the original bill and the chapter amendment stem from the nation’s first attempt to enforce conservative states’ abortion bans passed in the wake of the overruling of Roe v. Wade. In February Hochul signed legislation to shield the identities of doctors who prescribe abortion medications, days after a physician in the state was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor in Louisiana.

The February law allows doctors to request for their names to be left off abortion pill bottles and instead list the name of their health care practices on medication labels after a grand jury in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, indicted New York Dr. Margaret Carpenter and her company for allegedly prescribing abortion pills online to a pregnant minor. The Associated Press reported the charges against Carpenter appeared to be the first instance of criminal charges against a doctor accused of sending abortion pills to another state, at least since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Hochul said she would not sign an extradition request to send Carpenter to Louisiana and said authorities in Louisiana discovered the name of the doctor because it was on the medication label. The chapter name allows further shielding of a doctor’s identity by using the practice’s address.

Pills have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S. and are at the center of various political and legal battles in the state-by-state patchwork of rules governing abortion since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh, R-Ballston Spa, argued the state should hold off on further legislation regarding the abortion pills delivered out of state until courts have weighed in on the matter.

“So this is the whole problem, right?” Walsh said during floor debate. “We’re creating shield laws – and in this case, we’re, I argue, enhancing a shield law because we’re making it even more difficult for anybody else picking up that prescription bottle to figure out who wrote this prescription. Twenty states have banned or heavily restricted abortion since Dobbs returned the question to the states. I think that this whole situation, which will wend its way through the courts, I don’t know why we would want to wade into this now with another chapter amendment when we know there will be federal courts who will soon hear arguments over the legality and the constitutionality of statutes such as this chapter amendment.”