New Research Report Documents How Louisiana’s Abortion Bans Harm Patients and Clinicians
Fact-finding report by the Center and its partners finds that criminalizing abortion care violates medical ethics, public health standards, and human rights—and undermines maternal health.

A new fact-finding report by the Center for Reproductive Rights, Lift Louisiana, Physicians for Human Rights, and Reproductive Health Impact documents numerous and devastating harms to Louisiana patients and clinicians caused by the state’s laws criminalizing abortion care.
Louisiana law prohibits abortion at all stages of pregnancy with narrow and ill-defined exceptions, and providers risk civil, professional, and criminal penalties for violations.
In addition to violating evidence-based public health guidance, long-standing medical ethical standards, and international human rights, Louisiana’s abortion bans undermine maternal health in a state with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, according to the report.
Titled Criminalized Care: How Louisiana’s Abortion Bans Endanger Patients and Clinicians, the report is based on research conducted between May and November 2023 using in-depth interviews with dozens of Louisiana clinicians and patients, as well as focus group discussions with state community-based organizations involved in enabling access to reproductive health care.
“This report vividly documents how Louisiana’s abortion bans violate pregnant people’s human rights to health, life, and reproductive autonomy,” said Karla Torres, Senior Counsel for U.S. Human Rights at the Center. “These findings are a stunning indictment of the medical care pregnant people receive in a post-Roe America. In a state already facing a maternal health crisis that disproportionately impacts Black people, the findings reveal how the bans put the life and health of pregnant people at risk every day.”
The study details how Louisiana’s laws have changed the day-to-day practice of medicine and the devastating impact this has had on both patients and providers.
Among its many alarming findings, the report documents how Louisiana’s abortion bans are:
- Undermining maternal health by pushing back the start of prenatal care, often beyond the first trimester, to avoid the risk of miscarriage care being misconstrued as an abortion.
- Eroding clinicians’ ethical obligations to provide patients with the proper standard of medical care by threatening them with severe professional, civil, and criminal penalties.
- Denying and delaying abortion care for patients facing serious and potentially life-threatening pregnancy complications and health conditions.
- Disproportionately harming historically marginalized communities and groups, which often live in “maternity care deserts” and don’t have the resources to travel out of the state for care.
- Harming the patient-provider relationship because of the confusion about what information, including referrals, clinicians are allowed to provide.
Louisiana’s maternal mortality rate is among the highest in the country.
(Deaths/100,000 live births)
- Louisiana: 39.0
- United States: 23.5
Maternal deaths and mortality rates by state, 2018-2021, Centers for Disease Control
Furthermore, the report shows how the state’s abortion bans violate international human rights obligations to protect reproductive health and autonomy and nullify existing federal statutes to protect patient access to emergency care, including the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).
“At least where I work, there is no first trimester care in the office setting anymore. Any of this bleeding, any of this anything, reports to the ER. . . patients are told only to start prenatal care toward the end of the trimester when the risk of miscarriage is less.”
An OB-GYN commenting about the delay in prenatal care
Criminalized Care: How Louisiana’s Abortion Bans Endanger Patients and Clinicians outlines specific recommendations on how to address these harms, including repealing Louisiana’s abortion bans, decriminalizing abortion, and ensuring that Louisianans have access to reproductive health care. In addition, it calls on hospitals and health care professionals to speak out against these harmful bans and on state medical associations to vigorously advocate for their repeal.
“The Louisiana government must urgently meet its human rights obligations by repealing the state’s abortion bans and ensuring that all Louisianans have access to the full spectrum of reproductive health care, including abortion,” added Torres.