April 2011 saw a remarkable amount of anti-choice legislation. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 33 laws in 9 states restricted abortion or made it more difficult for women to obtain them. The states that made new restrictions on abortion in April were all located in the middle of the country, except for Virginia, which passed a bill restricting abortion coverage under insurance exchanges.
Kansas seemed to be one of the more extreme states: it passed laws banning abortion after 20 weeks, requiring written parental consent for abortions on minors, and revising its “partial birth” abortion ban. It also passed a law requiring pre-abortion counseling, mandating that medical staff tell women that abortion ends the life of a “whole, separate, unique, living human being” and provide information on the father’s liability for child support and copious lists of adoption and parenting resources.
April victories aren’t slowing down pro-life Kansans, they’re trucking along with a proposal to stop private insurance companies from offering standard abortion coverage along with other medical service. And as we’ve reported previously, the first practitioner to offer abortions in Wichita since the murder of Dr. George Tiller has been stopped by her landlord for creating a “nuisance.”
For more anti-abortion coverage, check out excellent reporting by Nick Baumann and Kate Sheppard. For state-by-state updates, check out the Guttmacher Institute’s rather exhaustive index here.
