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 care 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 Laws
45 states and the District of Columbia have laws subjecting abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not imposed on other medical professionals: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, 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.
- All of these states prohibit certain qualified health care professionals from performing abortions.
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6 states and the District of Columbia have expanded the scope of practice of advanced-practice clinicians to include medical and/or surgical abortion services: CA, CT, DC, IL, NY, RI, WA.
- 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.
- 17 of these laws are at least partially unenforceable: AK, AZ, ID, IL, KS, LA, MA, MS, MO, NY, ND, OH, OK, PA, TN, UT, WI.
2012 Enacted State Legislation
4 state enacted 4 measures that subject abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not imposed on other medical professionals: AZ, LA, MS, TN.
2012 Notable Cases
In July, in Jackson Women’s Health Org. v. Currier, a federal judge temporarily enjoined Mississippi’s newest TRAP law on the grounds that it would effectively shutter the last-remaining abortion provider in the state. The law added to 35 pages of existing restrictions the requirement 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. However, a short time later, the judge allowed the law to go into effect, instructing the provider to continue with its efforts to comply with the new law.
2012 Notable Developments
After a year-long regulatory fight, in September, the Virginia board of health voted 15-2 to approve permanent regulations that would regulate first-trimester abortion clinics as a type of hospital. The board was subjected to months of intense political pressure by the state’s anti-choice governor and attorney general. When the board voted to apply the regulations more fairly by grandfathering in existing clinics, the attorney general refused to certify the regulations, accusing the board of acting outside of its scope of authority. Instead, the board ultimately approved regulations that force existing clinics to meet construction guidelines for new health-care facilities, and which could effectively shutter a majority of the state’s 21 clinics.
