Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Spate Of New, Restrictive Laws Causing Concern For Abortion Rights Advocates
Arkansas has joined Arizona in requiring doctors to tell pregnant women they can reverse the effects of abortion medication, a controversial mandate that adds to the state’s lead in enacting anti-abortion legislation this session and continues what abortion-rights advocates say is a trend in other states to tighten access to the procedure. Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a bill Monday that forces doctors to tell patients that hormone medication could reverse the effect of abortion pills. Arizona became the first state to enact this law on March 30. (Evans, 4/8)
A new Kansas law banning a common second-term abortion procedure is the first of its kind in the United States. The law, signed by Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback on Tuesday, bans what it describes as "dismemberment abortion" and defines as "knowingly dismembering a living unborn child and extracting such unborn child one piece at a time from the uterus." (Shoichet, 4/8)
The Oklahoma Senate on Wednesday passed a ban on the main procedure used for second trimester abortions, a day after neighboring Kansas became the first state to ban the practice that its critics call "dismemberment abortions." The "Dismemberment Abortion Act" passed easily in both houses of the Republican-dominated Oklahoma legislature and should soon head to Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, who has been a staunch supporter of abortion restrictions. (Herskovitz, 4/8)
Oklahoma would ban a common second-trimester abortion procedure that critics describe as dismembering a fetus under a measure that lawmakers overwhelmingly approved Wednesday, a day after Kansas became the first state to prohibit the same procedure. (4/8)
