States have enacted nine new abortion regulations and advanced dozens of others as the spring legislative season nears an end.
West Virginia has banned most abortions past the midpoint of pregnancy. Idaho has placed new requirements on how medication abortions may be administered.
So has Arkansas, along with approving a measure requiring doctors to inform patients of abortion risks 48 hours before performing the procedure.
These types of laws have been passed by a record number of states in recent years. But Arizona got a lot of attention this week for approving a new kind of law, one that requires doctors to tell women they can reverse medication abortions halfway through the process if they change their minds.
According to a count released Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute, a group that supports abortion rights, 53 new abortion restrictions had been approved by a legislative chamber and nine had been enacted by April 1.
In the first three months of this year, legislators introduced 791 reproduction-related provisions. The group says nearly 42 percent of those are aimed at restricting access to abortion, although anti-abortion activists insist the measures seek to improve safety.
Abortion opponents have been trying for decades to restrict the procedure, but lately they have had huge success by getting states to pass new laws placing new requirements on clinics and doctors, governing how or when medication abortions can be administered, and prohibiting abortions past the midpoint of pregnancy based on the idea that a fetus can feel pain.
