What's happening
This bill requires healthcare providers to post and explain a pregnant persons' bill of rights, detailing informed consent, refusal of treatment, and other patient protections.
Why it matters
Empowers pregnant individuals with explicit rights. The bill sets out a comprehensive list of rights for pregnant people, including the right to refuse treatment—even if it may be life-threatening—without facing coercion or moral pressure from healthcare providers.
Mandates culturally sensitive and individualized care. It requires healthcare settings to provide culturally appropriate care, and allows pregnant persons to request changes in their healthcare team or birth setting, ensuring that personal comfort and cultural needs are respected.
Enhances transparency and informed decision-making. The legislation obligates providers to disclose all potential risks, methods, and alternatives associated with procedures, and to offer information in multiple languages, improving understanding and ensuring that consent is genuinely informed.
Establishes clear penalties for non-compliance. By imposing financial penalties for providers who fail to comply, it creates real accountability, aiming to ensure that these patient protections are consistently upheld in practice.
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Who cares
Headline styles
Pregnant Patients' Rights Law
Plain English, a few words. Used as the page title.
Sponsors
3 Co-sponsors
History
- Referred to health
- Referred to health
Full text
2 pagesUnderlined is new[Struck] is removedOfficial text on nysenate.gov ↗
STATE OF NEW YORK
1756
2025-2026 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
January 14, 2025
Introduced by M. of A. ROSENTHAL, PAULIN, SEAWRIGHT, JACKSON -- read once and referred to the Committee on Health
AN ACT to amend the public health law, in relation to establishing a pregnant persons' bill of rights
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. Title 6 of article 2 of the public health law, as added by chapter 342 of the laws of 2014, is amended by adding a new section 266-a to read as follows:
§ 266-a. Pregnant persons' bill of rights. 1. Any healthcare professional who could reasonably foresee having pregnant persons as patients shall conspicuously post a pregnant persons' bill of rights to be issued by the department. The bill of rights shall be written in plain English, and shall be made available in other languages, including but not limited to Spanish, French, Chinese and Russian. The pregnant persons' bill of rights shall include, but not limited to the:
(a) right of decisionally capable pregnant persons to refuse treatment, even if the refusal could result in the loss of life;
(b) requirement of doctors to receive informed consent from a pregnant person before performing any medical procedure;
(c) requirement that coercion may not be used to receive that consent, nor may appeals to conscience or morality;
(d) requirement that care should be provided in a culturally sensitive environment;
(e) requirement that counseling and therapy should be made available to anyone who experiences an adverse outcome as a result of refusing treatment, but such counseling and therapy should not be required and pregnant persons have the right to refuse the therapy;
(f) requirement that pregnant persons have the right to choose which medical procedures such pregnant person agrees to, without pressure throughout pregnancy and delivery;
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD04851-01-5
(g) right to request room, doctor or nurse change at any point;
(h) right to know doctor's methods;
(i) right to change such pregnant person's mind with respect to any treatment decision at any point;
(j) right of pregnant persons to be in any position they want so long as it is medically indicated as safe;
(k) right of pregnant persons to know the risks associated with any and all tests or procedures;
(l) right of pregnant persons to receive or refuse any type of emotional, social, psychological or physical support people have before, during and after labor;
(m) right of pregnant persons to choose birth setting;
(n) right of pregnant persons to refuse or accept any administered drug/treatment; and
(o) right of pregnant persons to receive information about any potential direct or indirect effects, risks, hazards to such pregnant person and fetus because of a drug or procedure.
2. Before a healthcare professional commences a physical examination or any treatment of a pregnant person, the healthcare professional conducting the exam shall inform the person of the pregnant persons' bill of rights by providing a copy of such bill of rights and offering to explain such rights.
3. Failure to comply with the provisions of this section shall result in a penalty of five hundred dollars for the first violation, and for the second and each subsequent violation, the penalty shall be one thousand dollars.
§ 2. This act shall take effect on the thirtieth day after it shall have become a law.
Reflowed for reading: line numbers and page breaks removed. Cite the official text.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.