The year 2016 was a mostly good season for abortion rights, according to a year-end report from the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The Supreme Court handed abortion rights supporters a major victory in June in the Whole Woman’s Health case, when it struck down Texas’ new requirements for abortion providers to get hospital admitting privileges and meet the facility standards of ambulatory surgical centers.
The ruling cast a legal shadow over similar measures several other states had passed over the past few years, as part of a strategy by anti-abortion activists to more heavily regulate abortion providers instead of just trying to ban abortion.
“The Supreme Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health does not erase these hundreds of restrictions from the books,” the report says. “Rather, it sets forth a concrete, robust legal standard that litigators and advocates alike can use to block laws in the courts and stop them from becoming law in the first place.”
States also passed pro-contraception legislation, including measures allowing pharmacists to dispense 12 months of birth control at a time. Eight states passed laws expanding access to contraception, according to the report.
Yet a number of states advanced new laws intended to reduce access to abortion or place more requirements on abortion providers. Eight states passed legislation to defund Planned Parenthood, eight states banned clinics from donating fetal tissue, and four states passed measures banning an abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation, according to the report.
“These trends lay bare the true motives of anti-abortion advocates,” the report says. “To stigmatize women who need abortions and the providers who care for them.”
