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U.S. state laws put tight squeeze on abortion access, advocates say

by Ellen Wulfhorst | @EJWulfhorst | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 26 May 2016 11:00 GMT

Abortion has been legal in the U.S. since 1973, but a tide of restrictive rules has made access increasingly difficult in many states

NEW YORK, May 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Abortion is legal in the United States and has been since 1973, but a tide of restrictive rules and regulations has made access increasingly difficult in many states, according to reproductive rights advocates.

Here are some facts about abortion and its availability in the United States:

- Americans are split in their views of abortion. A recent study by the Pew Research Center found 51 percent say abortion should be legal in all or most cases and 43 percent say it should be illegal all or most of the time.

Those figures have been relatively stable for at least two decades, Pew said.

- According to the National Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, there have been more than 58 million abortions in the United States since the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade made it legal in 1973.

- At current rates, roughly three in ten U.S. women will have had an abortion by age 45, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights group.

- In Texas, passage of restrictive laws in 2013 forced more than half the state's abortion clinics to close.

For women whose nearest clinic shut down, the average distance to the next clinic increased fourfold to 70 miles (110 km).

A third of those women face more than $100 in added expenses due to lost wages, child care, transportation and overnight costs, according to the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

If the laws are upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, where they have been challenged, Texas would be left with no clinic in the 500 miles (800km) between San Antonio and the New Mexico border.

- More than two dozen states have passed what National Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, calls "right-to-know" laws explaining risks and alternatives to women seeking abortions.

- Six U.S. states require that women be told personhood begins at conception when they seek abortions, according to Guttmacher.

- Five states require that women be told there is a link between abortion and breast cancer, which the National Cancer Institute and other medical experts say is false.

- Three states require that ultrasounds be performed on women seeking abortions and that the provider describe and show them the images.

- Twenty-seven states have laws deemed "hostile" to abortion rights, according to Guttmacher, and 18 of those states are considered "extremely hostile."

Put another way, 57 percent of women of reproductive age live in a state considered hostile to abortion rights, according to Guttmacher.

- There have been 17 known arrests or convictions in connection with self-induced abortions, according to the Self-Induced Abortion (SIA) Legal Team at the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

- Legislators this year in nine states have introduced measures to ban all or most abortions, typically by granting legal personhood to a fetus at conception or prohibiting abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, according to Guttmacher.

- This month, the governor of Oklahoma vetoed a bill calling for prison terms of up to three years for doctors who performed abortions, saying it would not withstand a legal challenge.

- The bill, approved in the state legislature, would have made performing an abortion a felony and called for revoking the license of any doctor conducting one. It exempted abortion necessary to save the life of the mother.

- North Dakota and Indiana have laws that prohibit abortions in cases of fetal abnormality such as Down syndrome. The law in Indiana takes effect on July 1.

- The anti-abortion group Americans United for Life lists Oklahoma as the state "most protective" of unborn children, followed by Kansas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. It ranks Washington state, Vermont, New Jersey, California and Oregon as "least protective."

- A doctor in Washington, D.C. has filed a civil rights complaint against the hospital where she works, claiming it is violating the law by forbidding her to speak publicly in defense of abortion. The hospital says it was concerned about the possibility of anti-abortion violence.

(Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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