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Friday, July 15th, 2011

States Enact Record Number of Abortion Restrictions in First Half of 2011

Author:    
Source:     Guttmacher Institute
Publication Date:     13-Jul-11
 Link: States Enact Record Number of Abortion Restrictions in First Half of 2011
Stephan:   This is an meta-view of the war on women, a strategy whose tactics include restricting pregnancy termination, and a concerted drive to force pregnancies by restricting access to birth control. I think it is designed to force the creation of 'families.' That's the ideology and theology driving these actions. The fact that it also means increased and untreated STDs, and cancers in women is the measure of the Right's cynicism.

In the first six months of 2011, states enacted 162 new provisions related to reproductive health and rights. Fully 49% of these new laws seek to restrict access to abortion services, a sharp increase from 2010, when 26% of new laws restricted abortion. The 80 abortion restrictions enacted this year are more than double the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions enacted in 2005-and more than triple the 23 enacted in 2010. All of these new provisions were enacted in just 19 states.
Enacted abortion restrictions by year
A Mix of Old and New Strategies to Curb Access to Abortion Care

Counseling and waiting periods. Five states (IN, KS, ND, SD and TX) adopted laws related to abortion counseling and waiting periods in 2011, but a measure adopted by South Dakota at the end of March went significantly farther than those approved in other states. The law expands the pre-abortion waiting period to 72 hours, requires the woman to visit a crisis pregnancy center in the interim and mandates that abortion counseling be provided in-person by the physician who will perform the procedure. The counseling must include information on all known risk factors related to abortion, even when the information is […]

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