Mandatory Delays and Junk Science Among New Abortion Restrictions in 2015
New policy brief details troubling trends in abortion restrictions
(PRESS RELEASE) Anti-choice politicians in states across the U.S. have continued to pass harmful restrictions on women’s reproductive health care services, either through sham laws that shutter clinics or by intruding in women’s personal private decision-making—according to a new policy brief released today by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The brief—The States of the States: 2015 at the Midpoint—highlights six troubling trends in state laws passed so far this year. From junk science used to further interfere in the doctor-patient relationship in Arizona and Arkansas to a surge of mandatory delays for women seeking safe and legal abortion services across the South, each measure poses a threat to women’s health, rights, and personal decision-making.
The briefing also details six proactive efforts to improve and expand reproductive rights and access—including information on four states’ work to restore full insurance coverage for abortion services and successful efforts in Louisiana to defeat a measure that would have forced women seeking abortion services to learn the sex of their pregnancy and then banned any abortion services based on that information.
Said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights:
“Already this year, politicians have advanced a new crop of underhanded laws devised to interfere with women’s personal, private decisions and block access to safe, legal abortion..
“But that is not the end of the story. In the face of these relentless attacks on women’s health and rights, lawmakers are fighting back with measures of their own that would repair the this nation’s patchwork system of abortion access and help millions of women struggling to obtain basic health care.”
The brief outlines the six separate abortion restrictions passed in Arkansas this year, as well as Texas politicians efforts to further chip away at access to reproductive health care in a state already devastated by underhanded abortion restrictions.
Many of the measures outlined in today’s brief have been challenged—and successfully blocked—by the Center for Reproductive Rights. In June 2015, the Center filed four new challenges to unconstitutional state laws, including:
- Florida’s 24 mandatory delay for women seeking abortion services,
- Kansas’ unconstitutional law which criminalizes doctors for providing the most common method of abortion in the second trimester,
- Tennessee’s Texas-style clinic shutdown law, and
- Arizona’s measure which forces health care providers to lie to women about medical abortion “reversal.”
Today’s brief further underscores the need for the federal Women’s Health Protection Act (S. 217/HR. 448)—a bill that would prohibit states from imposing unconstitutional restrictions on reproductive health care providers that apply to no similar medical care, interfere with women’s personal decision making, and block access to safe and legal abortion services.
