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Fast Facts
Counseling Bans & Gag Rules
What are counseling bans and "gag rules," and how do they impede women's access to health care? |
Having access to information about the full range of reproductive options is essential to making informed health-care decisions. Counseling bans, also known as “gag rules,” typically prohibit organizations that receive state and/or federal funds from counseling or referring women for abortion services, hinder doctors from treating their patients responsibly, and severely limit women’s ability to make informed choices. Women and their health-care providers—not politicians—should make private medical decisions. |
CURRENT STATE LAWS20 states have laws that prohibit some or all state employees or organizations that receive state funds from providing counseling or referring women for abortion services: AL, AZ, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MI, MN, MS, MO, NE, ND, OH, OK, PA, SC, TX, VA, WI.
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CURRENT FEDERAL LAWSThe Federal Refusal Clause is a back-door “gag rule” that allows health-care companies to forbid their doctors from providing medically necessary and appropriate abortion care, or even referring patients to another provider. |
2009 FEDERAL ACTIONIn January 2009, President Obama issued an executive order repealing the global gag rule. This harmful Bush-era policy prohibited the U.S. Agency for International Development from granting family-planning funds to any overseas health center unless it agreed not to use any funds—including its own, private, non-U.S. funds—to provide, counsel, or refer women for abortion care, or from taking a pro-choice position. Following the repeal of the global gag rule, anti-choice senators attempted to reimpose it legislatively, but failed. In separate action, pro-choice senators voted in committee for a provision that would permanently block the imposition of the global gag rule by a future president; however, the provision was ultimately not enacted. | |
