As Abortion Restrictions Soar, Abortion Coverage Dwindles

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/08-2



Over the past decade, it has gotten much more difficult for women in the United States to access safe and legal abortion services, according to a new study by the Guttmacher Institute:

Twenty-two states enacted 70 abortion restrictions during 2013. This makes 2013 second only to 2011 in the number of new abortion restrictions enacted in a single year. To put recent trends in even sharper relief, 205 abortion restrictions were enacted over the past three years (2011–2013), but just 189 were enacted during the entire previous decade (2001–2010).

These laws include restrictions on abortion providers, insurance coverage of abortions, and abortions themselves, among other things. The study continues:

In 2000, 13 states had at least four types of major abortion restrictions and so were considered hostile to abortion rights…. Twenty-seven states fell into this category by 2013…. The proportion of women living in restrictive states went from 31 percent to 56 percent, while the proportion living in supportive states fell from 40 percent to 31 percent over the same period.
How have national media kept up with this dramatically changing landscape? Not so well. According to a search of the Nexis news media database, coverage of abortion in the New York Times and Washington Post–the papers with the most influence on national political debates–have been trending downward since 2001.

[jsr]

1. Recommend

[niyad]

2. k and r--it's only women. why bother covering such an insignificant subject?

even here on du--women's issues are not exactly hot topics, even for viewing (witness the almost-ignored latest gang-rape in india, for example). but, we can get dozens and dozens of threads and posts and views about something like "woo". very disheartening.