AUGUSTA — Health care providers who prescribe abortion pills may soon be able to remove their names from prescription labels — a move advocates say is necessary to protect providers’ personal safety amid the heated political climate over abortion access.

A bill sponsored by Rep. Sally Cluchey, D-Bowdoinham, is aimed at protecting health care providers who say they have been threatened and harassed for facilitating abortions.

The bill narrowly cleared the House on a 74-71 vote Tuesday, with four members absent. It passed in the Senate, 19-13, without debate on Wednesday.

Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, was unable to vote in the House because of her censure. But Libby, an abortion opponent, will be allowed to vote when the bill comes back, after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the House to restore her voting and speaking rights while her lawsuit is pending.

Additional votes in each chamber are needed before the bill can be sent to Gov. Janet Mills, who has not yet taken a position but has been supportive throughout her term of efforts to expand abortion access in the state and protect providers.

Cluchey said LD 538 came at the request of health care providers who have been harassed and stalked at work and at home after their personal information was posted online. She said her proposal is a “simple but essential bill” that would allow health care providers to list their clinics, rather than their names, on prescriptions for abortion pills such as mifepristone, misoprostol and their generic alternatives.

“This request comes directly from providers who are concerned for their own safety and the safety of their families,” she said. “These health care providers have faced harassment through phone calls, text messages and online threats. Their personal information has been shared publicly to incite violence. They have been stalked, targeted with bomb threats and harassed in their homes.”

Opponents, however, argued that listing the prescribers’ names is a way to ensure accountability and transparency in case someone is hurt by side effects of a prescription. Some wondered whether the proposal would cause clinics to be targeted.

While conceding the drugs could also be used to treat other conditions, Rep. Marygrace Caroline Cimino, R-Bridgton, said the main use is for abortions, especially in states that have strict limits or bans on abortions, and where patients rely on prescriptions from health care providers in other states that allow abortions and provide physicians with legal protections under so-called shield laws.

Cimino said the bill is aimed at protecting health care providers in Maine, which enacted a shield law last session, from being prosecuted in other states if they prescribe the drugs to out-of-state patients.

“The purpose of this bill is clear — to protect doctors from criminal prosecution when prescribing these (drugs) to patients in other states where abortion is restricted,” Cimino said. “This bill provides an additional shield to doctors who willingly defy the laws of other states where abortion access is limited.”

Cimino said eight states have enacted similar laws since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned abortion protections under Roe v. Wade that had existed for five decades. New York passed a similar bill this year days after a New York physician was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant girl in Louisiana.