Report: Dramatic Increase in Attacks on Reproductive Rights

Salon’s Jenny Kutner calls a new report released by the Guttmacher Institute charting legislative attacks on reproductive rights “foreboding.”  The report shows a dramatic uptick in the number of restrictions passed by state legislatures in the last four years.

Since the 2010 midterm elections, states have enacted 231 abortion restrictions out of 335 proposed measures. Just last year, 15 states adopted 26 new restrictions on abortion care, and, as Kutner points out, the state legislatures in anti-choice strongholds like Texas and North Dakota weren’t even in session.

The political landscape will provide little to no relief regarding this trend in 2015, Kutner notes:

GOP control over statehouses, governors’ mansions and Congress promises to bring renewed challenges to reproductive healthcare, likely in the form of increased TRAP laws meant to curb abortion access.

The report also documents a dramatic increase in the number of states considered “hostile” (having four or five abortion restrictions) or “extremely hostile” (having six or more), as well as the proportion of women living in hostile states. Fifty-seven percent of women now live in states either hostile or extremely hostile.

At the Center for Reproductive Rights, we know this is what we are up against. That’s why we have mobilized unprecedented resources to fight in courtrooms and legislatures across the country, and why we continue to champion the federal Women’s Health Protection Act, which has the teeth to stop these endless state attacks in their tracks.