State legislatures continued to boost their regulation of abortion procedures and clinics by adding 57 new provisions in 2015, a research group said Monday.
The tally of 2015 regulations is far from the unprecedented 92 provisions passed in 2011, but it demonstrates lawmakers’ zeal to control abortion since the majority of the new rules are “restrictive,” the Guttmacher Institute said.
Lawmakers typically frame their new rules as necessary and “common-sense” protections for women’s health and safety.
The most popular topics for legislation involved requiring counseling and waiting periods, placing limits on second-trimester abortions and abortions performed with pills, and requiring abortion doctors to have local hospital-admitting privileges and abortions clinics to meet standards of ambulatory surgical centers (ASC), Guttmacher said.
Several of provisions have been enjoined in courts, pending trial. In Kansas and Oklahoma, laws banning use of “fetal dismemberment” techniques in abortions after 12 weeks gestation are now in court.
In Arkansas, a requirement that medical abortions be conducted using Food and Drug Administration protocol was blocked by a court on Dec. 31.
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In March, the Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments over a Texas law that requires local hospital-admitting privileges and ASC standards. A federal court ruled that the law was unconstitutional, but the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling and upheld the law.
Lawmakers in Texas and elsewhere have passed the hospital-admitting privileges rules, saying women who go to hospitals with abortion-related emergencies need a continuity of care with their abortion doctor.
The ASC standards laws are intended to ensure that proper medical facility standards are kept, and that emergency technicians will be able to get their equipment and gurneys for patients inside the abortion facilities.
Many lawmakers cite the “house of horrors” clinic of former Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell as a reason to bring new standards to all abortion facilities and doctors. Gosnell, who is serving a life sentence for murder, performed abortions for years with unqualified assistants in a dilapidated building with old equipment, blood-spattered surfaces and cluttered hallways.
Texas’ law has “common-sense measures” that elevate the standard of care and protect the health of women, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in November, when the Supreme Court said it would take the care on the state’s 2013 abortion law.
Pro-choice advocates, however, say these are “targeted regulation of abortion providers” (TRAP) laws that only serve to hamper women’s ability to get abortions.
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They note that dozens of clinics have had to go out of business rather than retrofit their facilities, and many abortion doctors — especially those who fly in from out of state for “abortion days” in a clinic — cannot get local hospital-admitting privileges.
According to Guttmacher’s report, 17 states passed 57 new abortion provisions in 2015.
Taken together, state lawmakers have passed 288 abortion restrictions since the 2010 elections, which saw many Republican and pro-life political leaders elected.
Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas and Oklahoma have been particularly active on the abortion issue, enacting at least 20 provisions in the last five years, Guttmacher said.
• Cheryl Wetzstein can be reached at cwetzstein@washingtontimes.com.
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