TRAP law | Be a Seed for Change

I hope you saw this important message. Join me and stand with the women of Mississippi to keep the last abortion provider open in the state. We can’t let back-door bans take away women’s rights.

Thanks,

Ilyse.

Anti-choice politicians in Mississippi are trying to close the state’s last remaining abortion provider.

If we don’t stop them, the last clinic in that state could shut its doors for good.

Stop the bans big

Contact the state health officer to say that Mississippi women and families deserve access to abortion care.

Your help is needed to take a stand for choice right now. As states like North Dakota and Kansas pass unconstitutional bills directly aimed at banning abortion, others are using a sneakier approach. We call them “back-door bans” and they use regulations clearly designed to block women’s access to abortion in their states.

Next week is the culmination of a relentless campaign by lawmakers in Mississippi to put the Jackson Women’s Health Organization out of business. It’s the one remaining abortion provider in that state. Send a message that you won’t stand for these back-door abortion bans.

We call these back-door bans TRAP laws, short for “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.” Like all medical professionals, abortion providers already comply with important health and safety regulations. But TRAP laws are something different: they create a costly and confusing mine-field of additional requirements and regulations not imposed on other medical providers. Anti-choice politicians pretend that TRAP laws are about protecting women’s health, but their real goal is to close down clinics.

And that’s just what’s happening next week in Mississippi. For more than a year, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization has fought for survival in the face of 35 pages of new requirements designed to shut it down. On April 18, the state health department will hold what may be the final hearing on the future of the clinic. Send a message now that Mississippi women and families should be able to make their own reproductive choices without the interference of these burdensome and unnecessary regulations.

In many cases, providers targeted by back-door abortion bans are the sole resource for women in their communities or even their entire state. And yet, they come under extraordinary scrutiny from politicians whose only goal is to deny services to women.

Help us fight for this clinic and the women in Mississippi who depend on its services. Send a message now that these back-door bans are wrong. Tell leaders in Mississippi that the women of their state must have the right to control their futures. For the sake of women’s health and women’s rights – let’s keep the Jackson Women’s Health Organization open for business.

Thank you for helping make choice real for all women.

Ilyse Hogue Ilyse G. Hogue President, NARAL Pro-Choice America

by Jessica PiekloSeptember 17, 2012

Dispatches From The War On Women: Red-Taping Abortion Clinics Out Of Existence

The purpose of

Targeted regulations of abortions providers (TRAP) laws is simply to drive providers out of existence.The 2012

legislative session saw a boom TRAP laws and they are having the desired effect.

In Mississippi, for example, a controversial law passed last year required hospital admitting privileges for anyone who would provide abortions. It was designed to shut down the only public abortion provider in the state. And, as Robin Marty reports, while it hasn’t shut down the clinic yet, it’s getting close.

Mississippi’s only abortion clinic has hired two extra staff members to handle paperwork related to a new law (HB 1390) that requires doctors who provide abortion care to be board certified in obstetrics and gynecology and have admitting privileges at a local hospital, Politico Pro reports. However, every hospital that has responded to the clinic’s applications for its doctors to obtain admitting privileges has denied the requests so far: “Each application was at least 50 pages long,” Politico Pro reported, adding that the two new staffers worked on the issues “for months” (Politico Pro, 8/31).

It’s not just that they add expense, it is that they provide openings for anti-choice activists to harass providers, which of course, also adds expense. That’s the case in Indiana where an anti-abortion group claimed Monday that a Lafayette clinic that offers RU-486, is violating Indiana law by performing abortions without a license.

A spokesman for the Indiana State Department of Health would not comment on the clinic’s licensing status or whether abortions with RU-486 are treated the same as surgical abortions under state law. The drug was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000. “The ISDH will have to investigate the specific facts before determining if this practice violates any laws of Indiana for which ISDH is responsible for enforcing,” spokesman Ken Severson said in an email.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana President Betty Cockrum said in a statement that all of the organization’s clinics comply with state law. “While we’re not shocked that these extremists would stoop to these tactics, we are disappointed that they would flat-out lie,” Cockrum said. “The fact is that our health center in Lafayette, like our other 27 health centers across the state, provides its services in accordance with Indiana law, without fail.”

The problem with TRAP laws is not just that they add expense and hurdles for providers, often in states already extremely hostile to abortion rights. It’s that they target women the most in crisis and the most in need which, of course, is so very pro-life.

Mississippi Abortion Clinic Stays Open For Now

Federal Judge Blocks Mississippi’s Anti-Abortion Law