In the first 3 months of 2013, state legislators have introduced 694 provisions aimed at reproductive rights and abortion, according to Guttmacher Institute.

In 2013, as in recent years, state legislatures are devoting significant attention to issues related to reproductive health and rights. During the first three months of the year, legislators have introduced 694 provisions on these issues, and 93 have been approved by at least one legislative body.

 

Also in line with recent experience, abortion restrictions are at the center of state legislative activity. About half (47%) of all reproductive health measures introduced in the first quarter of the year seek to restrict access to abortion. But unlike in recent years when the thrust of legislative activity was on regulating abortion (e.g., requirements that women undergo an ultrasound, clinic regulations or insurance coverage restrictions), legislators this year seem to be focusing on banning abortion outright—either by declaring that personhood begins at the moment of conception or by prohibiting abortion even during the first trimester of pregnancy.

 

In a positive development, two states were poised at the end of March to enact legislation expanding access to comprehensive sex education; if enacted, it would be the first time since 2010 that any state has done so. (See here for a more detailed version of this analysis).

Read more at Guttmacher Institute

Are you listening? Do you hear? Read my lips soon there will be no abortions in states controlled by Republican legislatures. Over the last decades, abortion rights have been chipped away. The remaining few are now being hit with a large sledge hammer. Unconstitutional laws are passed that take away a woman’s right to choose. Fetal heartbeat detection is propelling the laws. Hear a heartbeat, restrict abortion.

States are vying for the most restrictive abortion laws. It does not seem to matter that in Roe vs Wade the time limits had to do with viability and established 24 weeks as the time factor. Apparently, now a fetus can survive even before it is conceived, according to some of the personhood laws or weeks before a woman even knows that she is pregnant. In early March, the Arkansas legislature overrode Governor Beebe’s veto to pass one of the strictest abortion laws in the country. The Human Heartbeat Protection law says that once a heartbeat is detected (around 12 weeks using an abdominal ultrasound) abortion is banned.  

After Arkansas passed this law, the North Dakota legislature surpassed Arkansas by sending the governor two new anti-abortion laws and considering two Personhood bills. One of the laws bans abortion at 6 weeks and the other prevents abortion based on genetic defects or fetal abnormality. One of the personhood measures would ban abortion completely and the other would complicate birth control, stem cell and invitro fertilization.  In fact the laws are so extreme that a group of Republican legislators are protesting the laws. Rep. Kathy Hawken (R-Fargo) is outraged by the attacks on women. She says that the focus is on the unborn while neglecting protections and help for the born. This past week, Governor Dairymple signed into law the most restrictive abortion laws in the country - essentially banning abortion from the state.

Legislators in Kansas were spurred into action and are planning a massive attack on women’s rights. A veritable omnibus of anti-woman legislation. These laws will outlaw abortion by defining life at conception, tax abortion services and providers, make doctors give false information about abortion, have no exceptions for rape or incest and will not allow sex education in schools.

Heartbeats and fetal pain laws push the accepted time limits for abortion. They use pseudo-science as their basis and have no regard for established law. These "right-to-lifers" callously make their laws based on their own belief system and show no concern for the women who are having their right to choice, privacy and health taken away. They are interested in the "unborn." But once the unborn is born many of them want to cut all health care, education and support for them. And the woman or the family are not even a part of the contemplation. There is nothing subtle about their goal -- they want to do away with the right to choose for all women.

We need to stand with the protests in Arkansas and North Dakota. We need to help JAC elect leaders at the federal level who will support and advance a pro-woman agenda.

One aspect of the strictest abortion law in the country?  A 800-mile long area where no abortion services are available.

On Tuesday, Gov. Jack Dairymple signed legislation that would give North Dakota the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. The legislation bans the procedure as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected, something that can happen as early as six weeks in; imposes the first state ban on abortions based on genetic defects such as Down syndrome; and makes it generally more difficult for a doctor to perform the procedure by requiring those who do to have hospital-admitting privileges.

 

The measures, which wouldn't go into effect until Aug. 1, are likely to face a serious legal challenge in court, and many expect the heartbeat ban to be overturned, something even Dairymple hinted at when signing it into law. "Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade," the governor said this week, referring to the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion up until a fetus is considered viable, usually at around 22 to 24 weeks.

 

As unlikely as the law is to survive, ABC News does a good job of illustrating the indirect—but perhaps not unintended—impact of the ban if it holds up: The likely closure of Fargo's Red River Women's Clinic, which according to the Guttmacher Institute has existed as the lone abortion provider in the state since 2001.

 

map image from Slate.com

Read more at Slate.com

What a difference three years makes.

In 2010, Nebraska passed the country’s most restrictive abortion law that barred abortions after 20 weeks. By March 2013, 12 states have done so — or passed restrictions even earlier in the pregnancy, like North Dakota’s six-week ban.

These are the states you see in orange, in this graphic below, which uses data from the Guttmacher Institute to map all the laws that ban later-term abortion in the United States. The slightly lighter states represent those where a ban exists but is not in effect, due to a pending legal challenge.

Read the whole article and explore the map at Washington Post.

This week Arkansas became the 10th state to outlaw abortion after 20 weeks by overturning the governor's veto on this law - a limit which violates the Supreme Court's legal threshold.

Arkansas adopted new abortion limits Thursday, outlawing most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, even as its State Senate approved a more restrictive bill that would ban abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, had vetoed the 20-week limit on Tuesday, saying it was likely to be found unconstitutional, but the newly Republican-controlled Senate voted to override Mr. Beebe’s veto on Thursday; the House had already done so Wednesday. The measure is set to take effect immediately.

 

Arkansas is the 10th state to outlaw abortions after 20 weeks, in part based on the theory that fetuses can feel pain at that stage, a notion disputed by mainstream medical associations.

 

The 20-week limit also violates the legal threshold set by the Supreme Court, which has held that states cannot ban abortions before the fetus becomes viable. Such a limit has not yet been tested by the courts.

Read more at New York Times

A new report from MotherJones shows that access to "the morning after pill" does not make women more promiscuous.

The so-called morning-after pill has exploded in popularity since it was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration 15 years ago. According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5.8 million American women used emergency contraception (EC) between 2006 and 2010. Nearly a quarter of sexually active women ages 20 through 24 have used it. 

 

All told, 11 percent of fertile, sexually active women said they had used EC, whereas back in 2002, the last time CDC surveyed women, only 4 percent had.

 

While more people are using EC, what's most interesting is who is using it and how. For instance, only 5 percent of women over 30 have used it. And most who have say they have only done so once—a rebuttal to the stereotype that the morning-after pill is enabling women to be irresponsible hussies.

Read more at MotherJones

Indiana is closer to mandating not one, but two invasive vaginal ultrasounds when a woman has a medication-induced abortion.

The Indiana state Senate on Wednesday advanced a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound procedure both before and after having a medication-induced abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy.

The Senate Health and Provider Services Committee approved Senate Bill 371 on Wednesday by a vote of 7 to 5, sending it to a full vote in the state Senate. The bill, introduced by state Sen. Travis Holdman (R), imposes heavy regulations on clinics and physicians that offer medication abortions, which are generally used to end a pregnancy up to 10 weeks from a woman's last period. It would require women to be presented with the sound and image of the fetal heartbeat before the abortion and to return for a follow-up ultrasound to ensure that she is no longer pregnant and has stopped bleeding.

Dr. Anne Davis, the consulting medical director for Physicians for Reproductive Health, said the requirement would place an undue burden on women seeking to end their pregnancies. "She can do a blood test at any local facility after an abortion to show that the hormone levels are going down as they should, there's no medical reason to make her drive back to the abortion clinic and go through another ultrasound," she said. "This is yet another onerous, medically unnecessary barrier."

Both ultrasounds, abortion physicians explain, would likely have to be performed with a transvaginal probe, since medication abortions usually occur too early in the pregnancy for the external "jelly-on-the-belly" procedure to provide a clear image. Davis said that transvaginal ultrasounds are the "standard procedure" used for first-trimester abortions and that they can be "physically or emotionally uncomfortable." Requiring two of these ultrasounds, she said, would be medically unnecessary, and would make abortion access more difficult for poor and rural women who cannot get time off work, need to make childcare arrangements and have long distances to drive.

Read more at Huffington Post

The Senate has the 60 votes necessary to pass Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and override any possible filibuster.

Next up in the Senate: The Violence Against Women Act.

 

Senate Democrats have achieved the 60 votes necessary to bypass a filibuster and reauthorize the domestic violence legislation.

“JUST TOPPED ‘magic number’ of 60 bipartisan cosponsors of my #VAWA legisl.; We’re moving briskly toward Senate vote on the Leahy-Crapo Bill,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) wrote Thursday afternoon on Twitter.

 

The seven Republicans who have joined 53 Democrats in support of the legislation are Sens. Kelly Ayotte (NH), Susan Collins (ME), Mike Crapo (ID), Dean Heller (NV), Mark Kirk (IL), Jerry Moran (KS) and Lisa Murkowski (AK).

 

A floor vote is expected as early as next week.

Read more at Talking Points Memo

New plans to address contraception coverage objections for religious non-profit organizations would allow employees to still access coverage via a third party under their employer-based insurance.

The Obama administration proposed broader latitude Friday for religious nonprofits that object to the mandated coverage of contraceptives, one that will allow large faith-based hospitals and universities to issue plans that do not directly provide birth control coverage.

 

Their employees would instead receive a stand-alone, private insurance policy that would provide contraceptive coverage at no cost.

 

The new proposal aims to find middle ground between faith-based nonprofits that have a religious opposition to contraceptives and women’s health advocates who vociferously supported the required coverage of birth control without co-payment.

 

It could also breathe new life into lawsuits filed against the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive requirement, some of which were put on hold until the Obama administration clarified its policy on the issue.

 

Under this proposal, objecting nonprofits will be allowed to offer employees a plan that does not cover contraceptives. Their health insurer will then automatically enroll employees in a separate individual policy, which only covers contraceptives, at no cost. This policy would stand apart from the employer’s larger benefit package.

 

The faith-based employer would not “have to contract, arrange, pay or refer for any contraceptive coverage to which they object on religious grounds.”

Read more at Washington Post

After hastily removing all evidence of her last attempt that would put the victims in jail, AZ lawmaker Cathrynn Brown is back with a new bill that would charge medical providers who perform an abortion for a rape victim with a felony.

We all remember last week when Republican state legislator Rep. Cathrynn Brown introduced a bill that would charge rape survivors seeking an abortion with a felony, right?

And we all remember when she was promptly Internet shamed and removed all evidence of the bill from her website, posthaste?

Well, she’s back. And so is the bill.

After finding out that the public doesn’t take too kindly to putting rape survivors in jail, Rep. Brown amended the legislation. Now, instead of charging women who terminate a pregnancy caused by rape with “tampering with evidence,” the updated bill will charge state abortion providers. Why? For “facilitating” the destruction of evidence.

So abortion after rape would still be a crime in New Mexico. And that is still a problem.

Read more at Salon.com

With Roe v Wade turning 40, here is an interesting look at the national numbers from Think Progress.

Tuesday is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ensures legal access to abortion services. But four decades after Roe gave women the freedom to make their own reproductive choices, the reality for women in the U.S. isn’t so clear cut — even though more Americans now support legal abortion than ever before, abortion rights are under serious attack across the country. Here’s the current state of abortion rights in the U.S., by the numbers:

• 70: Percentage of Americans who now oppose overturning Roe, the highest number since 1989. Most religious groups also want to leave Roe in place.
• 135: Number of new state-level abortion restrictions enacted over the past two years. 2011 and 2012 represented the worst years for reproductive freedom since the 1973 Supreme Court decision.
• 87: Percentage of U.S. counties that don’t have an abortion clinic. At least four states — North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi — only have a single abortion clinic left.
• 45: By the time American women reach this age, nearly half of them will have had an unintended pregnancy at some point in their lives. About one in three will have had an abortion.
• 20: Number of states that allow insurers or employers to deny women affordable contraception by refusing to comply with Obamacare’s birth control mandate. Studies have shown that Obamacare’s contraception provision will help reduce the national abortion rate.
• $470: Average cost of a first-trimester abortion. Even though most of the women who have abortions have health insurance, the majority of women pay out of pocket to have an abortion.
• 42: Percentage of women who have abortions whose income levels fall below the federal poverty line. Seven out of ten women who have had an abortion would have preferred to have the procedure sooner, but many of them were forced to delay because they needed more time to raise the money for it.
• 0.3: Even fewer than this percentage of abortion patients experience complications from their procedure that require hospitalization. Studies have repeatedly shown that having an abortion is far safer than giving birth.

As the Roe v Wade decision reaches its 40th anniversary, Terri O'Neil, president of National Organization of Women, reflects on what it has meant and what still needs to be done.

Forty years ago this month, the Supreme Court affirmed a woman's right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. The landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in the United States, forever changing and literally saving the lives of countless women. The impact of Roe has been both inspiring and frustratingly insufficient.

 

Access to abortion care, as well as birth control, helped pave the way for women to participate in the world outside the home in ways that men have long taken for granted. During the second half of the 20th century, we witnessed the incredible transformation of women's role in U.S. society. Women streamed into universities and workplaces. They began taking on jobs that once seemed permanently reserved for men. They moved into positions of power in politics and corporations. Their economic status relative to men improved dramatically.

 

Could all this have happened without Roe v. Wade and the earlier cases that established the right to use contraception? Of course not. As now-retired U.S. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor once noted, women's ability to "organize intimate relationships and make choices that define their views of themselves and their place in society" was directly attributable to Roe. She continued: "The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives."

 

But the ongoing march toward full equality for all women requires more than an acknowledgement that a "right to choose" exists. One in three women will have an abortion before the age of 45, making the procedure a common and necessary aspect of women's reproductive health. But it is by no means the be-all and end-all of our health. Without access to the full spectrum of reproductive care—from prenatal care to mammograms, comprehensive sex education to STD/HIV screenings, in addition to birth control and abortion—a woman's ability to define her place in society will remain elusive. That these services are disproportionately out of reach for women of color, young women, immigrant women, and Native American women speaks to the limitations of Roe.

Read more at US News & World Report

Following last week's Supreme Court decision to not issue an emergency injunction, Hooby Lobby will defy federal contraception coverage rules, incurring fines up to $1.3 million a day beginning January 1st.

Last week, an attorney for Hobby Lobby announced that the retail chain will defy the federal contraceptive coverage rules by refusing to include coverage of emergency contraception in its employee health plan, the Los Angeles Times reports. Hobby Lobby and its sister company, Mardel, face fines of up to $1.3 million per day as of Jan. 1 for not complying with the rules. The companies' conservative Christian owners object to covering EC because they believe it is the equivalent of an abortion.

 

The companies' announcement came shortly after the Supreme Court denied their request for an emergency injunction to block enforcement of the contraceptive coverage rules (Li, Los Angeles Times, 1/1). The court said it will not consider the case until lower courts have ruled (Haberkorn/Smith, Politico, 12/26/12).

"The company will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees," said plaintiffs' attorney Kyle Duncan of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He added, "To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs" (Brown, Salt Lake City Deseret News, 12/31/12).

Read more at National Partnership for Women & Families

Last week, the US Supreme Court denied a request from Hobby Lobby for an emergency injunction blocking ACA's contraception coverage requirements. Beginning January 1st, the company will incur daily fines if they refuse to comply with the requirements.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday denied Hobby Lobby’s request for an emergency injunction to block the health reform law’s contraceptive coverage requirements and said it will not decide the case before lower courts have ruled.

 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the store owner doesn't meet the extremely high standards required for a preliminary injunction. It's not "absolutely" clear that they need the injunction and lower courts have been divided on whether to grant similar requests, she wrote, though she adds that the court doesn't have much experience with similar religious-based claims for emergency injunctions.

 

"Even without an injunction pending appeal, the applicants may continue their challenge to the regulations in the lower courts. Following a final judgment, they may,if necessary, file a petition" for the Supreme Court to hear the case, she wrote.

Read more at Politico

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has quietly signed into law severe restrictions on abortion clinics.

Gov. Bob McDonnell has certified health regulations that impose strict hospital construction standards on Virginia abortion clinics -- triggering the next step in a multitiered approval process that could make the revised rules permanent by this summer.

 

Unlike the public relations ballyhoo that accompanies many executive actions, McDonnell, an anti-abortion Republican, certified the regulations and had them posted to the Virginia Town Hall website without a public announcement on the Friday between the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

 

The signoff comes more than three months after the rules were adopted in September by the state Board of Health at a contentious meeting during which abortion-rights advocates claimed board members were being intimidated into changing their decision in June to grandfather existing clinics from the building requirements.

 

Members of abortion-rights advocacy groups reacted strongly to the governor's approval in statements released Monday.

Read more at Huffington Post