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Fast Facts
Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP)
What are TRAP laws, and how do they impede women's access to health care services? |
The anti-choice movement has undertaken a campaign to systematically impose unnecessary and burdensome regulations on abortion providers—but not other medical professionals—in an obvious attempt to drive doctors out of practice and make abortion care more expensive and difficult to obtain. Such proposals are known as TRAP laws: Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. Among the most common TRAP regulations are those restricting where abortion care may be provided. Regulations limiting abortion services to hospitals or other specialized facilities, rather than physician's offices, require doctors to obtain medically unnecessary additional licenses, needlessly convert their practices into mini-hospitals at a great expense, or provide abortion services only at hospitals, an impossibility in many parts of the country. |
CURRENT STATE LAWS44 states and the District of Columbia have laws subjecting abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not applied to other medical professionals: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, IA, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, NE, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI, WY.
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All of these states prohibit certain qualified health care professionals from performing abortions.
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25 of these states restrict the provision of abortion care—often even in the early stages of pregnancy—to hospitals or other specialized facilities: AK, AR, CT, GA, ID, IN, MA, MN, MS, MO, NV, NJ, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, UT, VA, WI.
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15 of these laws are at least partially unenforceable: AK, AZ, ID, IL, MA, MS, MO, NY, ND, OH, OK, PA, TN, UT, WI. |
2007 STATE LEGISLATION14 states considered 24 measures that would subject abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not applied to other medical professionals: AL, FL, HI, IL, IN, MN, MS, MO, NH, OK, OR, TX, VA, WV.
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2007 NOTABLE CASES
In 2007, a federal district court considered the constitutionality of a Missouri law that would require abortion providers to convert their facilities into ambulatory surgical centers. While the court issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks enforcement of the law, it ordered abortion providers and the state to work together to modify the clinic regulations and return to the court in the event of an impasse. Subsequently, a lawsuit was filed in a Missouri state court asking to exclude from the law providers who only prescribe the medical abortion pill (commonly known as RU 486 or mifepristone). A decision has not been rendered in that case.
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