New restrictions greatly reduce access to abortions

SEATTLE — With state legislatures across the country passing dozens of abortion restrictions for the fifth year, access is becoming more limited than at any time since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade, which established the right to abortion.

The current legislative session is shaping up to be among the most active, and abortion rights advocates point to what they call an alarming result of the steady flow of new laws: In some states, so many limitations have piled up that the procedure, while technically legal, is nearly impossible to obtain.

“It is a culmination of the wave of restrictions of the past three years,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “You see one type of restriction following another, following another. When you put them all together, the result is a closing off of access.”

Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, describes it as “putting up a wall brick by brick by brick, slowly, so no one notices” and points to Arkansas as among the states where the limitations have piled up — more than a dozen since 2011, about half of which were passed this year.

“If you look at each abortion restriction in isolation, you may think, ‘It’s not great. It’s not what should be the law. But I’m not going to get worked up,’” Dalven said. “But if you put it down on paper ... it becomes very clear what the state is trying to do — prevent a woman who’s decided to have an abortion from actually getting one.”

Longer waiting periods

North Carolina and Oklahoma increased waiting periods to 72 hours. Kansas and Oklahoma banned dilation and evacuation, the most common surgical method of ending a pregnancy in the second trimester. Arkansas began requiring doctors to tell women that fetuses can feel pain and that anesthesia is available for the fetus during an abortion.

The backdrop for the burst of abortion restrictions is the U.S. Supreme Court, which is poised to announce as soon as Monday whether it will weigh into the contentious issue in a major way for the first time since 1992. It is considering whether to hear two abortion-related cases, one from Mississippi, the other from North Carolina.

Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, credits “changing attitudes in the public” with the antiabortion movement’s successes in cutting access to the procedure.

“People are more willing to place limits on abortion,” said Tobias. “The laws that are going through, most people think are reasonable and support them.”

The ultimate goal, she said, “is to protect all unborn children. But we are taking the steps that we can at this time to save as many babies as we can right now.... Legislation has been part of it.”

Multiple clinic visits

Laws that require women to wait between the initial consultation and the actual procedure have been a foundation of antiabortion efforts. The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research organization, counts 26 states with such measures. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed HB 465 on June 5, tripling his state’s waiting period from one to three days.

Abortion rights advocates argue that such delays often require multiple clinic visits, increase travel costs and the need for time off work, and can force women to have abortions later in their pregnancies and increase the risk.

“This is as if legislatures are saying, ‘Women really can’t make this decision, don’t know what is best for themselves and their families and if we make them wait another day or two, they’ll see the light,’” Dalven said.