Louisiana would join five states that force people to wait three days to receive abortion care. Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah all have 72-hour waiting periods.
There's a long tradition of politicians and authority figures railing against reproductive health-care services, yet claiming the right to use them for their own benefit.
Convicted murderer Scott Roeder is set to be re-sentenced in connection with the death of Dr. George Tiller while his associate Angel Dillard will stand trial for threatening another Wichita, Kansas abortion provider. These are particularly alarming developments at a time when anti-choice violence has spiked.
Students, speakers from local reproductive health clinics, and abortion storytellers are empowering each other and their communities to declare: “We are Abortion Positive, are you?”
In a reversal from last year, Colorado lawmakers on Thursday approved a state budget that includes funds for a program credited with reducing the teen birth rate by 40 percent and the teen abortion rate by 35 percent.
Dilation and evacuation bans are a strategy by the anti-choice movement to target specific abortion procedures. Medical professionals criticize these bans as substituting politicians’ agendas for the judgment and expertise of doctors.
"It is deeply, deeply concerning that in 2016 we are talking about jailing women’s healthcare providers for protecting their patients’ privacy," said Mary Kogut, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood's St. Louis affiliate.
The Republican-backed law contains numerous anti-choice measures, including forced counseling and mandatory ultrasounds for abortion patients, regulations on physicians who provide abortion care, and a ban on fetal tissue donation.