by: PFAW Staff |
People For the American Way | Report
In 1992, the Supreme Court, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, upheld women’s constitutional right to abortion services, but allowed certain leeway in placing restrictions on access to reproductive healthcare. Since then, right-wing politicians have increasingly pushed through state laws meant to chip away at the right to choose and undermine the protections of Roe v. Wade. These state-level draconian proposals are intended to cripple the ability of women to access reproductive health services. Burdensome waiting periods and parental notification requirements have been passed throughout the country, and now anti-choice activists are increasingly turning to new ways to undercut women’s healthcare and constitutionally protected liberties.
Following the 2010 elections, more state legislatures have become hostile to choice. Their efforts to undermine reproductive rights include ultrasound requirements that impose callous and cruel psychological pressure on women who have made the decision to terminate their pregnancies; targeted restrictions on abortion providers (TRAP laws), which levy unnecessary regulations against clinics that could force many to close; and constraints on abortions supposedly sought because of the “race and gender” of the fetus. Some states are even considering legislation that could legalize the murderof abortion providers.
Not only are radical state legislators threatening the ability of women to gain access to reproductive health services, but they are also testing the boundaries of both Roe and Casey. States are now weighing laws that challenge well-accepted medical research, banning abortions in the second trimester under the guise of “fetal pain” and even in the first trimester at the detection of a fetus’s heartbeat. Among the most radical measures being considered are “personhood” laws, which would declare zygotes and fetuses fully legal persons completely separate from their mothers. Once at the extreme fringe of the anti-choice movement, personhood laws now have a chance at passing in a number of states and could lead to new challenges to Roe v. Wade. Along with the attacks on choice and women’s healthcare coming from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, these new and dangerous laws emerging from the states put women’s healthcare and reproductive freedom at grave risk.
(More here.)
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