From the Washington Post:
As state legislatures across the country wrap up their 2016 sessions, one of the most active areas of legislating hasn’t been red-hot LGBT issues or immigration. It’s been the decades-old issue of abortion.
And on that issue, social conservatives are on a roll. This year, antiabortion advocates passed some 30 laws in 14 states to make it harder for people to get abortion. Here are a few of the big numbers. A graphic of recent laws is here.
- Nine states introduced measures to ban all or most abortions. Only one, Oklahoma, made it to the governor’s desk. The governor vetoed it.
- Three states have banned the most common method of second-trimester abortions (Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia), while 13 in all have tried. Louisiana’s governor is deciding whether to sign a similar law.
- Two states, Louisiana and Kentucky, lengthened the waiting period to get an abortion.
- South Dakota and South Carolina voted to enact abortion bans after 20 weeks, making them the 16th and 17th states to do so.
- Indiana, which already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, made it illegal to abort a fetus because it is diagnosed with Down syndrome or because of its race or gender.
