Abortion Is Slowly Becoming Legal in Name Only

This article was published by the Center for American Progress

State Laws Seek to Deny Women Their Reproductive Rights

By Sally Steenland

Joseph Kroll, director of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment bureau wrote the new rules for abortion clinics.

When does a legal right become theoretical instead of real? If you want to know the answer, take a look at what’s happening to reproductive rights.

States across the country are denying women what they need to protect their health and plan their families.

More than 900 antiabortion laws have been introduced since the midterm elections last November, and more than 60 have been passed. For instance, in Kansas a new licensing law for abortion clinics mandates what size and temperature clinic rooms must be, requires that staff dressing rooms have toilets, that clinics stock particular medical equipment and supplies, and that they be connected to nearby hospitals.

South Dakota enacted an antiabortion law with requirements so onerous they essentially deny a woman her legal right to an abortion. The bill mandates a waiting period of 72 hours before a woman can have an abortion and requires two separate visits to a doctor. It also requires that a woman get counseling at a “crisis pregnancy center,” a place explicitly created to oppose abortion. On top of these obstacles, South Dakota spreads across nearly 755,000 square miles and has only one abortion clinic. A doctor is flown in from out of state once a week to see patients.

Right now there are only three abortion clinics in the state of Kansas. Soon there may be none.

Indiana recently defunded Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the state. The new law makes any organization that performs abortion ineligible for state funds. Lack of clarity in the state’s antiabortion law is affecting hospitals, too. Since its enactment, doctors in hospitals have stopped terminating pregnancies that pose a high risk to the health and life of a woman for fear of losing Medicaid patients.

According to Elizabeth Ferries-Rowe, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Wishard Memorial hospitals, the law has “tied the hands of physicians attempting to provide medically appropriate, evidence-based care.”

Dr. Ferries-Rowe gives this example: A woman loses her amniotic fluid at 16 weeks of pregnancy. If her pregnancy isn’t quickly terminated, she risks serious infection that can damage her organs and cause brain damage or death. Given Indiana’s law, however, doctors would not be able to terminate her pregnancy.

Twenty-week bans: An extremist trend

Among the most dangerous laws are those that restrict or ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. So far, six states — Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma — have passed 20-week laws, and more are likely to follow. Only about 1.5 percent of all abortions occur after 20 weeks of pregnancy, but those that do are often medically necessary.