These statistics should give the lie to legislators’ arguments that their anti-abortion measures are somehow good for women’s health or aimed at protecting their rights.
A 2017 study by the Center for Reproductive Rights and IBIS Reproductive Health, a healthcare think tank, found that hostility to reproductive rights tended to go hand-in-hand with a lack of state-level policies supporting women’s and infant health.
States with the largest number of abortion restrictions such as mandatory waiting periods, counseling and ultrasounds; restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions in public or private health plans; and unnecessary standards on ambulatory abortion clinics tended to have the fewest number of supportive policies, the survey found. Those included Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act; family leave; sex- and HIV education programs; and good access to children’s health insurance programs.
Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and South Carolina all topped out with 14 of the 14 abortion restrictions tracked by the researchers; all also offered 11 or fewer of the 24 supportive policies identified by the researchers.
To take just one of those policies, seven of the 12 states with highest infant mortality have refused to expand Medicaid. Of the others, Indiana and Louisiana approved their expansion late (after Jan. 1, 2014, the earliest date for expansion) and three, including Ohio, have implemented it with restrictions such as work requirements or premiums.
