Reports, Fact Sheets & Polling

This report summarizes the state of women's access to reproductive-health care nationwide, including legislation enacted in the states in 2016.

A new NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund survey in four key Senate battleground states demonstrates that voters support women’s reproductive health, want to support candidates who do as well , and will vote on the issue.

A summary of recent public opinion polls on reproductive health care.

Anti-choice members of Congress pass legislation every year that denies federal employees the opportunity to choose a private health plan that includes comprehensive coverage of reproductive-health services.

The decision of anti-choice members of Congress to bar the District from using its own locally raised revenues for abortion services usurps the prerogatives of the local D.C. government and tramples the rights of District residents.

In a last-minute deal, anti-choice former Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) won inclusion of a number of abortion-related provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the national health-reform law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in March 2010.

The Affordable Care Act ushered in a new era in women’s reproductive-health care by guaranteeing that most health-insurance plans cover contraception without co-pay.

Title X of the Public Health Service Act is the cornerstone of the federal domestic family-planning program: it is the only federal program exclusively dedicated to family planning and reproductive-health services.

So-called "defunding laws" disqualify health centers that offer abortion services from seeing patients in government health-care programs, such as Title X, Medicaid, and other state public-health programs.

"Abstinence-only" programs provide young people with medically inaccurate information and do nothing to ameliorate the problem of teen pregnancy.

One of the most striking disparities between public opinion and public policy relates to “abstinence-only” programs.

The distinction between the emergency contraception (EC) and medication abortion (also known as mifepristone or RU 486) is important, especially since anti-choice lawmakers are trying to restrict women’s access to these and other reproductive-health services.

During the years that the global gag rule was in effect, it resulted in dramatic drops in funding to organizations worldwide that provide necessary family-planning services and other health-care services and an increase in abortion.

Enacted in 1973, the Helms amendment has resulted in a near-total ban on U.S. assistance to some of the world’s poorest women who need abortion care.

Mifepristone has been tested extensively and used safely and effectively worldwide since 1981, and in the United States since 2000.

National medical and public-health organizations support confidential health services for young people.

40 years after the Supreme Court recognized the right to choose with Roe v. Wade and the vital importance of women’s health, attacks on women’s privacy, and on health protections in particular, continue.

Race- and sex-selection abortion bans are false solutions to the real problems of racism and sexism. These abortion bans co-opt civil-rights language and use it to attack reproductive rights.

One anti-choice tactic to make abortion inaccessible is TRAP laws (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers). TRAP rules impose significant burdens on health-care providers, with the goal of forcing them to shut their doors.

The Federal Refusal Clause is a sweeping exemption from laws and regulations that ensure that women have access to abortion services.

This fact sheet provides a summary of refusal provisions in current federal law, followed by the text of the laws.

Prohibiting women from using their own funds to obtain abortion services at military facilities is not only discriminatory but endangers their health and denies women a constitutionally protected right.

Servicewomen deserve the same standard of care as civilian women. That includes access to emergency contraception (EC) on military bases.

School-based health centers (SBHCs) provide both primary and preventive services to children and adolescents at schools across the country.

The anti-choice movement has for years tried to restrict, control, and manipulate the information women facing unplanned pregnancies receive. To do so, they have built a national network of anti-choice organizations, some of them posing as comprehensive health-care clinics – called “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs).

As part of their strategy to make abortion illegal and unavailable, anti-choice forces make unsubstantiated claims that legal abortion is harmful to women’s health. The fact is that the decriminalization of abortion in the United States in 1973 has led to tremendous gains in protecting women’s health.

For four decades, unable to make abortion illegal again, anti-choice legislators have tried to make the procedure nearly impossible for women to obtain. One of their most aggressive tactics has been to put abortion services financially out of reach for as many women as possible by banning insurance coverage of abortion services in govern...

Forced ultrasound legislation effectively mandates that all women seeking abortion services undergo an ultrasound, even if not medically necessary, and even if it is against a woman’s will.

Learn about important Supreme Court cases related to reproductive freedom.

Emergency contraception (EC) holds tremendous potential for reducing the number of unintended pregnancies. In order to realize EC’s full potential to prevent unintended pregnancy, policymakers need to take several additional steps.