By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 12 years ago

More than half of American women live in places that don’t respect their reproductive rights

Today in sad but not surprising news…

According to a new Guttmacher report, in the last decade, the percent of all reproductive-age women living in states hostile to abortion rights has jumped from about a third to more than half.

What exactly does “hostile” mean? Pretty much what you’d expect: A whole slew of laws – from ultrasound requirements, waiting periods, insurance bans, etc – designed to put as many barriers as possible between a woman and the abortion she wants to have.

As more and more states – especially in the Midwest and South – continue to pass record numbers of restrictive laws, more and more women are slipping into hostile territory. And, sadly, the trend shows no signs of stopping in 2012.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

Read more about Maya

Join the Conversation