Government & You

In the 2010 elections, anti-choice politicians seized control of Congress and many state legislatures, vowing to focus on the nation's economic challenges. Once elected, however, these same lawmakers abandoned their promise and instead launched a War on Women. Now, for the second straight year, women have paid the price for this bait-and-switch strategy as anti-choice lawmakers in Congress and many states took every opportunity to restrict further the right to choose.

At the federal level, the 112th Congress (2011-2012) took 14 votes on choice: 10 in the House of Representatives and four in the Senate. Thankfully, the pro-choice-controlled Senate and President Barack Obama served as firewalls and blocked many anti-choice measures from advancing, most notably defeating Sen. Roy Blunt's (R-MO) attempt to undermine the nation's new contraceptive-coverage policy, and in the House, thwarting efforts to ban abortion after 20 weeks in the District of Columbia (H.R.3803) and criminalize doctors for the reasons women seek abortion care (H.R.3541).

At the state level, among the 42 anti-choice measures newly enacted in 2012, the most prominent trends were: bans on abortion care after 20 weeks; laws prohibiting abortion coverage in state health-insurance exchanges; and laws that prohibit state funds from going to Planned Parenthood or to any health center that provides abortion services.

States also considered and enacted a wide variety of other anti-choice bills, including those that force providers to tell women ideological and factually incorrect information about abortion services; force women to endure waiting periods before accessing abortion care; and place unnecessary and burdensome requirements on abortion providers. Laws that single out abortion providers particularly threaten access to abortion care because they reduce further the already declining number of providers. Already, 87 percent of U.S. counties have no abortion provider, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Opponents of choice also continue to pursue measures attacking women's reproductive health under the guise of defending religious freedom.

Total Anti-Choice Measures Enacted in 2012:

• 25 states enacted 42 anti-choice measures in 2012.
• Arizona enacted the most anti-choice legislation in 2012, with four measures. Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin each enacted three anti-choice measures.
• Since 1995, states have enacted 755 anti-choice measures.

Anti-Choice Measures Enacted in 2012 Included:

• Arizona, Georgia, and Louisiana enacted pre-viability bans on abortion care after 20 weeks. None of these laws has an adequate exception to protect women's health or for cases in which the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. Only Georgia and Louisiana offer a narrow and ambiguous exception for a "medically futile pregnancy." These unconstitutional laws are clearly designed as a challenge to Roe v. Wade.
• The Missouri legislature overrode the governor's veto and enacted a law that allows employers to refuse to cover birth control, abortion care, and sterilization. Arizona also broadened the existing refusal provision in its contraceptive-equity law. Lastly, Kansas broadened its existing abortion refusal law to sweep in birth control and referrals for these two services.
• Four states – Alabama, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wisconsin – passed abortion-coverage bans. These measures ban coverage of abortion in the states' health-insurance exchanges.
• The Missouri legislature overrode the governor's veto and enacted a law that allows employers to refuse to cover birth control, abortion care, and sterilization. Arizona also broadened the existing refusal provision in its contraceptive-equity law. Lastly, Kansas broadened its existing abortion refusal law to sweep in birth control and referrals for these two services.
• Arizona and North Carolina enacted laws restricting state funds from going to Planned Parenthood or to any health center that provides abortion care. (North Carolina's legislature overrode the governor's veto.) These types of laws make it difficult for reproductivehealth centers to provide birth control, prenatal care, and cancer screenings to low-income women who rely on those centers for their health care.
• Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Virginia enacted forced-ultrasound laws that require a woman seeking abortion care first to undergo an ultrasound procedure that neither she requests nor her doctor recommends. When a similar law was struck down in Oklahoma, the state's anti-choice lawmakers passed a new one.
• Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee imposed onerous regulations on abortion providers that are intended to make abortion care all but unavailable to women in the state. In Louisiana, the law prohibits certain qualified health-care professionals from providing abortion care. In Mississippi and Tennessee, in addition to the extensive and unreasonable requirements to which providers are already subject, each state now requires that all physicians providing abortion services must have admitting privileges at a local hospital, a near impossibility when nothing in the law requires hospitals to grant such privileges.
• Utah enacted a law forcing women to wait 72 hours before accessing abortion services. Mandatory delays create extreme burdens for women, especially women in rural areas who must often travel long distances to reach a health-care provider, or women who simply do not have the resources to take extra time off work or pay for child care. Although mandatory-delay laws are common, Utah is only the third state in the country to enact a delay of this magnitude.
• South Dakota enacted a biased-counseling mandate that effectively forces providers to interrogate their patients who seek abortion care. It forces doctors to violate a woman's privacy by asking about deeply personal topics, including her religious beliefs. Perhaps more alarming, it requires that her answers then be recorded in her medical records. The law has been temporarily enjoined pending litigation.
• Voters in Montana approved a ballot measure that requires physicians to give 48 hours notice to a young woman's parent before she can obtain abortion services, and provides no exception for rape or incest. The measure jeopardizes the health and safety of young women who may justifiably fear physical or emotional abuse if forced to disclose their pregnancy.
• This year, two states defeated ballot measures attacking choice under the guise of religious freedom. Residents of North Dakota and Florida voted down constitutional amendments that could have led to discriminatory practices endangering women's access to reproductivehealth care. Measure 3 in North Dakota would have allowed employers to deny their workers access to affordable contraceptives or to fire an employee who had a child out of wedlock, claiming an interference with their religious belief. Amendment 8 in Florida could have allowed a health program to deny information about birth control to victims of human trafficking.
• Florida voters rejected Amendment 6, which would have added two provisions to the state's constitution. The first provision would have imposed a ban on public funds that would have been used to pay the state's share of health-care coverage for its employees. The second provision would have added language to the state's constitution, overturning Florida's guarantee of a woman's right to privacy to a greater extent than the U.S. Constitution.