January 13, 2016

1,000 Reasons Why It’s Becoming Incredibly Difficult to Get an Abortion

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More anti-abortion laws have been passed since 2010 than in any other five-year period since 1973, according to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute. In the four decades since Roe v. Wade, states have enacted more than 1,000 laws restricting the procedure, and of those restrictions, 288, or nearly one-third, appeared after the 2010 midterm elections.

Ten states accounted for most of the new abortion restrictions, and four states—Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Indiana—adopted 94 measures, which constituted one-third of all new anti-abortion laws in the last five years. Kansas tops the list, having passed 30 anti-abortion laws since 2011, followed by Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Indiana, all with at least 20 new laws.

In the five years immediately following Roe v. Wade, states enacted about 200 abortion restrictions. Those measures mostly focused on “restricting abortions later in pregnancy, establishing onerous requirements for abortion clinics, mandating parental involvement for minors, and allowing some institutional and individual providers” to opt out of providing services, according to Guttmacher. Later abortions and parental-involvement laws are still popular among anti-abortion lawmakers, but more than half of the 288 new laws since 2010 focus on other restrictions. They include limits on medication abortion, bans on private insurance coverage, and requirements for physician’s abortion counseling.

And experts expect that 2016 will likely be worse for abortion rights than 2015, during which states passed more than 50 new laws that limit reproductive rights.

“Last year’s big events, like the Planned Parenthood videos and the Supreme Court case, have actually ginned up even more interest in restricting abortion,” Elizabeth Nash, a senior state issues associate at Guttmacher, told Mother Jones earlier this month. “If it was possible, they’ve actually added more energy to decreasing abortion access.”

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“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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