5 states that practically don't allow abortion

1) Idaho. Even though the constitutional right to abortion has been established for 38 years, a woman in Idaho was arrested and charged for aborting her pregnancy. The woman bought some drugs online to terminate her pregnancy, and was ratted out by an acquaintance who disapproves of a woman’s right to choose. Even though the rat is technically on the wrong side of the constitutional determinations regarding this question, she got her way. The woman in question was arrested because of Idaho’s recent ban on post-20-week abortions, even though she claims to have believed she was only 14 weeks along, which could be true, if she wasn’t seeing a doctor during this time.

Most anti-choicers claim they want to jail abortion providers, not women who have abortions, but it’s telling that the very first person to be charged under this new trend of states banning abortion at 20 weeks was not a doctor, but the woman who actually terminated her pregnancy.


2) Iowa. Iowa’s doing better on the numbers; unlike in most states, the number of providers has grown, from nine to 11. But that doesn’t mean it’s still not dangerous for women in Iowa.

Think being charged for a crime for having an abortion is scary? A woman in Iowa was arrested (not, thankfully, prosecuted) for merely thinking about abortion. Christine Taylor accidentally fell down some stairs and went for treatment at the hospital. While telling the nurse about her personal problems, a common enough situation at a hospital, Taylor let on that she had briefly considered abortion early in her pregnancy. The nurse called the cops, claiming the accident was an attempt at self-abortion. Taylor suffered three weeks of purgatory before the D.A. dropped the charges, but the fact remains that a woman was arrested and charges were considered on the grounds that she’d thought about exercising her constitutional rights.

3) Utah. As Michelle Goldberg explained in the Daily Beast, no woman’s story is too heart-rending for anti-choice zealots not to try to put her in jail for attempting an abortion. A pregnant 17-year-old who lived without electricity or running water in rural Utah, who may have been exploited by an older man and who certainly had no way to get to a doctor or pay for an abortion, paid a man $150 to beat her in the stomach.

The closest provider to the girl was a long drive away in Salt Lake City; there’s a total of seven providers in the whole state. Even though the abortion didn’t work, she was charged with criminal solicitation for murder. The charges were thrown out, because abortion is still not legally considered murder, but with many states passing 20-week bans on abortion, we can expect to see similar cases prosecuted with charges that could actually stick.

4) Kansas. It may still be legal to get or provide abortion in Kansas, but it’s become increasingly dangerous to do so. Human rights aren’t really being secured if trying to exercise them means facing threats of violence, as the civil rights activists of the past can tell you. Already one abortion provider in Kanas, Dr. George Tiller, has been assassinated, which dropped the number of providers in the state from four to three.

Even though the assassin received a life sentence, the continued threats of terrorism in Kansas haven’t slowed down at all, but have escalated. When a family doctor named Dr. Mila Means announced her intention to start offering abortions in Dr. Tiller’s stead, the result was a barrage of threats and harassment. And when the Department of Justice attempted to get a restraining order on one anti-choice extremist who threatened to kill Dr. Means, a federal court judge refused the request. It remains to be seen if federal intervention can quell the escalating hostilities.

6) Virginia. Virginia is quickly rivaling some of the more deep South states in the art of using legal harassment to run abortion providers out of business. Not only is the legislature trying to pass regulations that hold abortion clinics to hospital-level standards, but anti-choicers are trying to interfere with the Department of Health's decisions allowing abortion clinics to operate in the state. If anti-choice forces prevail, at least 17 of the 22 abortion clinics in Virginia will be forced to shut their doors.