In Florida, policymakers are considering a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. This bill and the inflammatory rhetoric surrounding it are straight from the well-worn antiabortion playbook of vilifying abortion later in pregnancy, regardless of the real-world harms to pregnant people.
Author: Elizabeth Nash
Elizabeth Nash is the Interim Associate Director of State Issues in the Guttmacher Institute’s Washington, DC office. She coordinates the efforts of the state team, which analyzes legislative, regulatory and judicial actions on reproductive health issues, and develops Guttmacher’s monthly State Laws and Policies series and update of state policy developments.
Danger Ahead: States Will Be the Main Abortion Battleground in 2021
So far in 2021, anti-abortion lawmakers have been introducing new legislation in overwhelming numbers.
State policymakers are eager to test the limits of what the new anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court might allow on abortion bans and restrictions, while laying the groundwork for constitutional protections for abortion to be weakened or eliminated entirely.
State Policy Trends 2020: Reproductive Health and Rights in a Year Like No Other
This year, 24 abortion restrictions were enacted, as were 16 provisions that protect and expand access to abortion services (including two identical sets of provisions in Virginia), and another 74 provisions that expand access to reproductive health services and education.