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.
- 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.
- 16 of these laws are at least partially unenforceable: AK, AZ, ID, IL, KS, MA, MS, MO, NY, ND, OH, OK, PA, TN, UT, WI.
2011 Enacted State Legislation
7 state enacted 8 measures that subject abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not imposed on other medical professionals: AR, AZ, IN, KS, ND, UT, VA.
2011 Notable Cases
In July 2011, in Hodes & Nauser v. Moser, a federal court temporarily enjoined Kansas’ new TRAP law on the grounds that the abortion providers who brought the suit had demonstrated sufficient evidence that their medical practices would “suffer irreparable harm” and that at least two women seeking abortion care at the time would be unable to access services if the law went into effect. The regulatory scheme spurred by the law was unveiled with only two weeks for providers to come into compliance with numerous new construction and facilities requirements, which threatened to shut down two of the state’s three abortion clinics. In August 2011, in Planned Parenthood of Arizona, Inc. v. American Ass’n of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (formerly Planned Parenthood v. Goddard, 2009), a state appellate court lifted a lower court’s injunction of an Arizona TRAP law that barred certain qualified health professionals from providing surgical-abortion care. In light of that ruling, parties in a state superior court case, Planned Parenthood of Arizona v. Goddard (2010), agreed to allow a new law that bars qualified health professionals from providing medication (RU 486) to go into effect as well. Another provision mandating that only a doctor provide certain types of pre- and pos-tabortion care remains unenforceable pending a ruling from the superior court.
2011 Notable Developments
In September 2011, prompted by legislation requiring the Virginia board of health to regulate first-trimester abortion clinics as a type of hospital, the board approved by a vote of 15-1 emergency regulations that are wholly unrelated to patient safety. This regulatory scheme includes extensive physical-plant requirements which are more far-reaching than those in any other state, as the regulations incorporate into law several chapters of a book of exhaustive guidelines for construction of new health-care facilities. (Guidelines, Facility Guidelines Inst., 2010 ed.) The building requirements are impossible to meet absent extensive renovation or new construction, and as such they threaten to shutter a majority of the state’s 21 clinics.
