Posts Tagged TRAP laws

Chart of the Day: Fewer state abortion restrictions were passed in the first half of 2014

But it’s hardly time to break out the champagne. While this year is looking better than the last few, according to Guttmacher’s new numbers on state anti-choice laws, abortion access is still under attack in the states.

So far this year, 13 states have adopted 21 new anti-choice laws–which is about half the number that had been enacted by this point last year. That’s an improvement–though the researchers partly attribute it to cyclical legislative trends–but the figure only really looks good in comparison to the record-breakingly awful last few years, when more abortion restrictions were enacted in three years than in the entire previous decade combined. On the other hand, a few states ...

But it’s hardly time to break out the champagne. While this year is looking better than the last few, according to Guttmacher’s new numbers on state anti-choice laws, abortion access is still under attack ...

Watch the south’s abortion clinics disappear in one scary GIF

As I mentioned yesterday, the Louisiana legislature just passed a bill that could close three — possibly four — out of the state’s five abortion clinics.

If that sounds disturbingly familiar, it’s because it should. Like similar bills in Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi, Louisiana’s new TRAP-style law requires that abortion providers have admitting privileges at a local hospital. And, just like in those other southern states, its intended effect is to shut down clinics and, ultimately, “end abortion in our country.”

Texas’s law has already partially gone into effect — and this map shows the huge blow it’s dealt to abortion access in the Lone Star State — ...

As I mentioned yesterday, the Louisiana legislature just passed a bill that could close three — possibly four — out of the state’s five abortion clinics.

If that sounds disturbingly familiar, it’s because it ...

Provision to Ohio budget could tighten abortion restrictions

It only took a day to blow my Wendy Davis high. Attacks on women’s access to abortion are happening in Ohio. In the process of passing a state budget, Ohio Republicans added a provision at the last minute that would require the following:

“…a doctor to use external medical means – likely an abdominal ultrasound – to find the heartbeat. The doctor would then have to notify the woman about the presence of the heartbeat and the fetus’ likelihood of surviving to full term.”

Rules like this one really get my tits in a twirl because they re-emphasize the fact that we do not trust women to be able to make choices about their bodies and lives. Instead, we think ...

It only took a day to blow my Wendy Davis high. Attacks on women’s access to abortion are happening in Ohio. In the process of passing a state budget, Ohio Republicans added a provision at ...

No Access. No Choice. Trapped

New TRAP laws force Virginia abortion clinic to close after 40 years of service

Earlier this month, the Virginia Board of Health voted 11 to 2 for new, irrational regulations on abortion clinics in the state, which many reproductive health and justice advocates correctly noted were intended not to make clinics safer for patients but to effectively erode access to abortion care in the state.

This weekend, the effects of such laws were felt loud and clear, as Hillcrest Clinic, the first South Hampton Roads medical facility ever to provide legal abortions, decided to close its doors for good after 40 years in business, noting that it would cost nearly $500,000 to meet the requirements set by the new law, including changing ventilation and temperature controls.

Since it opened in 1973 on 1600 E. ...

Earlier this month, the Virginia Board of Health voted 11 to 2 for new, irrational regulations on abortion clinics in the state, which many reproductive health and justice advocates correctly noted were intended not to make clinics ...

Another temporary win for Mississippi’s only abortion clinic

Yesterday the judge who holds the power to shut down Mississippi’s only abortion clinic said he’d extend the temporary block on the new TRAP law, while he continues to decide whether to grant a preliminary injunction.

As Vanessa noted when the law was first blocked earlier this month, the judge is more than a little disturbed that many state officials–including the governor and lieutenant governor–have unabashedly and gleefully declared that their intention with this law is to “end abortion in Mississippi.” The state’s attorneys argued that those comments aren’t relevant and instead urged the judge “to look only at the bill’s language for its intent, and not at public officials’ language about its motive.”

While I think it’s totally ...

Yesterday the judge who holds the power to shut down Mississippi’s only abortion clinic said he’d extend the temporary block on the new TRAP law, while he continues to decide whether to grant a preliminary injunction.

As ...

Mississippi judge blocks law that would shut down only abortion clinic in the state

As you may have heard recently, legislators in Mississippi were successful in passing a TRAP law designed to put the only abortion clinic in the state out of business, making it the first state in the union to have no access to legal and safe abortion care. The good news is that yesterday, the day it was to go into effect, a federal judge temporarily blocked the law from being enforced. 

Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed the suit, arguing that the legislation was created for the sole purpose of  shutting down the state’s only abortion clinic and was completely medically unnecessary. U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan in Jackson ordered a temporary ...

As you may have heard recently, legislators in Mississippi were successful in passing a TRAP law designed to put the only abortion clinic in the state out of business, making it the first state in ...

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