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(Reblogged from sp-a-m)
Since January, newly elected Republican majorities across the country have enacted 49 laws meant to chip away at abortion rights. But the strategy that’s worked best is not Idaho’s, where the ban affects a small number of abortions and is likely to be struck down in court. Instead, access to abortion is at greater risk in states that use regulations to squeeze clinics out of business. Known as “TRAP” (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws, such legislation is aimed at stopping abortion with a thousand regulatory paper cuts. Nowhere have TRAP laws been more successful than in Kansas. Starting today, anti-abortion lawmakers have succeeded in shutting down two abortion clinics, leaving only one open in the entire state.
How Kansas Banned Abortion (And which states will follow.)
This is something that I’ve been wondering about since the Idaho post-20-weeks ban passed: what functional purpose did it serve? To the best of my knowledge, no abortion providers in the state (all three of them) would perform abortions past that point anyway, so it’s clearly just a political point. A scary, threatening political point, granted.
(Source: diadoumenos)
