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Fast Facts
Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP)
What are TRAP laws, and how do they impede women's access to health-care services? |
The anti-choice movement has undertaken a campaign to impose unnecessary and burdensome regulations on abortion providers—but not other medical professionals—in an obvious attempt to drive doctors out of practice and make abortion care more expensive and difficult to obtain. Such proposals are known as TRAP laws: Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. Common TRAP regulations include those that restrict where abortion care may be provided. Regulations limiting abortion services to hospitals or other specialized facilities, rather than physicians' offices, require doctors to obtain medically unnecessary additional licenses, needlessly convert their practices into mini-hospitals at a great expense, or provide abortion services only at hospitals, an impossibility in many parts of the country. |
CURRENT STATE LAWS44 states and the District of Columbia have laws subjecting abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not applied to other medical professionals: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, IA, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, NE, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI, WY.
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All of these states prohibit certain qualified health care professionals from performing abortions.
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25 of these states restrict the provision of abortion care—often even in the early stages of pregnancy—to hospitals or other specialized facilities: AK, AR, CT, GA, ID, IN, MA, MN, MS, MO, NV, NJ, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, UT, VA, WI.
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15 of these laws are at least partially unenforceable: AK, AZ, ID, IL, MA, MS, MO, NY, ND, OH, OK, PA, TN, UT, WI. |
2009 ENACTED STATE LEGISLATION1 state enacted 1 measures that subjects abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not applied to other medical professionals: AZ. |
2009 NOTABLE CASES
In September 2009, in Planned Parenthood Arizona, Inc. v. Goddard, a state superior court temporarily enjoined Arizona's new law prohibiting certain qualified health-care professionals from providing abortion care.
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2009 NOTABLE DEVELOPMENTS
The South Dakota Senate considered a bill that would have required physicians providing abortion care to be physically present in the town where the surgery would take place 24 hours in advance of the procedure. Because no local doctors currently provide abortion services in South Dakota, doctors must travel there from other states. Mandating that physicians arrive a day early but not provide medical care during that time would have unnecessarily increased a medical facility's operational expenses, and thereby, increased the cost of an abortion. Had the bill been enacted, it could have made it impossible for doctors who work in multiple states during the week to provide care to South Dakotan women, effectively resulting in a statewide abortion ban.
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