What are biased-counseling and mandatory-delay laws, and how do they endanger women's health?
Biased-counseling and mandatory-delay laws prohibit women from receiving abortion care until they are subjected to a state-mandated lecture and/or materials typically followed by a delay of usually at least 24 hours. Like any patient, a woman considering abortion should receive full and unbiased information from her doctor about her medical options. However, these laws impose unnecessary government intrusion into private decisions and the doctor-patient relationship; often, they require that women be provided with medically inaccurate information, such as the disproven claim that abortion causes breast cancer. Mandatory delays create additional burdens for women, especially women in rural areas who often have to travel for many hours to reach a health-care provider, and for women who do not have the resources to take extra time off work or pay for child care. Mandatory-delay laws endanger women’s health by creating unnecessary burdens that can impede earlier, and therefore safer, abortion care.
Current State Laws
33 states have laws that subject women seeking abortion services to biased-counseling requirements and/or mandatory delays: AL, AK, AZ, AR, DE, FL, GA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT, NE, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WV, WI.
- 8 of these laws have been found fully or partially unconstitutional by courts: AZ, DE, KY, MA, MI, MT, SD, TN.
2012 Enacted State Legislation
5 states enacted 5 measures related to biased counseling and/or mandatory delays: AZ, OK, SD, UT, VA.
2012 Federal Action
In January, anti-choice lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill that would force women across the country to wait 24 hours before receiving abortion services and impose a burdensome two-trip requirement on them – without exception for survivors of rape or incest. The legislation is the first known bill of its kind at the federal level.
2012 Notable Developments
No legitimate scientific study has found a causal link between abortion and psychological trauma. Despite that fact, over the past few years, a series of events have unfolded that expose the shocking lengths to which anti-choice “scientists” are willing to go to manipulate data to bolster their claims. In February, the Journal of Psychiatric Research published a letter by University of California, San Francisco Assistant Professor Julia Steinberg and Guttmacher Institute researcher Lawrence Finer detailing the numerous methodological flaws they uncovered after extensive examination of a 2009 study, published in the same journal, that claimed a causal link between abortion and negative mental-health outcomes. In a rare move, the journal’s editor-in-chief agreed that the study, led by Priscilla Coleman, professor at Bowling Green State University, was “flawed” and unsupported. However, anti-choice activists and lawmakers continue to point to Coleman’s now-debunked study as justification for passing dangerous biased-counseling legislation across the country. Most recently, a federal court cited Coleman multiple times in its July majority opinion allowing a South Dakota law that forces providers to tell women abortion is linked to suicide to go into effect.
