2011 Already Sets Record Of Anti-Abortion Laws

By Bryan Gerhart
colorlines.com
July 19 2011

http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/07/2011_sets_unfortunate_record_of_anti-abortion_laws.html

The seemingly endless battle over women’s rights to
reproductive health care has taken a substantial legal step
backwards. So far this year, just 19 states have enacted a
total of 162 new laws relating to reproductive health.
Unsurprisingly, 49 percent of these work to restrict access
to abortion services, smashing the already unsettling record
of 34 legalized restrictions passed in 2005.

The laws attack access to abortion care from a variety of
angles. As the reproductive health and justice website RH
Reality Check details, conservative lawmakers have combined
established and inventive strategies in an effort to reduce
both access to reproductive health care and the influence of
family planning programs and institutions.

Among the restrictions passed in the first six months of this
year are tried-and-tested methods of limitation, like
extensions of counseling and waiting periods, and reactions
to the so-called "taxpayer-provided abortion" furor that
surrounded last year’s health care reform debate. Twenty four
states considered the issue of insurance coverage for
abortion, and eight passed laws that restrict private health
insurance plans from helping to cover the cost of the
procedure. This, coupled with the longstanding Hyde
Amendment, which prohibits coverage of abortion procedures
for those who receive health care through federal programs
like Medicare and Medicaid, leaves low-income women with
exceedingly few places to turn for access to reproductive
health services.

Additionally, family planning organizations like Planned
Parenthood continue to find themselves on the wrong side of
the Right’s radar. While nine of the 18 states with budgets
that include a specific line item for family planning kept
their funding of these programs intact, the other nine saw
dramatic cuts. Budgetary crises across the nation provided
welcome opportunities for these states to greatly reduce or,
in Montana’s case, eliminate the influence of family
planning.

The new laws don’t just retread over worn techniques of
deprivation. Some states are taking dramatic new steps to
limit women’s access to reproductive health care. While it is
still awaiting confirmation by the state’s Senate, Ohio’s
House of Representatives passed a measure that will ban
abortion procedures as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be
detected. This usually occurs between six and 10 weeks’
gestation, far from the approximate seven months necessary
for fetal viability, the point at which the fetus can survive
outside of the uterus. Five other states has passed laws that
ban abortions after 20 weeks gestation if the woman’s life is
not endangered, based on the claim that this is the point
when the fetus feels pain.

Along with recent pressure from independent organizations,
this unfortunate new record leaves women, especially those of
color, with more struggles facing and less access to the
reproductive services they should be entitled to.

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