11 obscene ways politicians are trying to stop women from having an abortion

From rendering patients unconscious to putting women in prison, state laws in the US have become disturbingly creative

Will women end up using coat hangers to abort their pregnancies if legal abortion is banned? (Getty Images)

As the US supreme court is battling whether or not to uphold one of the most aggressive assaults on women’s healthcare in recent history and shut down abortion clinics in Texas, women are facing a myriad of other hurdles and restrictions to access health care across the country.

From anesthetizing patients to putting them in prison, the Center for Reproductive Rights has documented the loopholes that lawmakers are proposing and signing into law to deter women from aborting their pregnancies and thereby chip away at their fundamental rights.

1) Defund Planned Parenthood

Despite one in five women relying on the family planning clinic during their lifetime, the US House of Representatives voted in September 2015 to strip the organization of all national funding which is dedicated to providing basic health care services, including contraception and breast cancer screening. It is also the largest abortion provider in the country.

2) Force clinics to shut down due to stringent requirements

If stopping funding is not an option, lawmakers can place an increasingly strenuous list of obligations on clinics and physicians. This includes asking doctors to have "admitting privileges", meaning they can walk in freely to a hospital situated within 30 miles of the clinic if needed, or demanding that clinics are equipped to the same standards as walk-in surgical centers.

For example, there is just one clinic in Mississippi. The Jackson Women’s Health Organization is fighting to keep its doors open. Now that the state governor has banned second trimester abortions, the waiting list alone could stop women from getting an abortion.

3) Anesthetise women during their abortions - unnecessarily

Like the thought of being knocked out instead of just taking a pill?

The governor of Utah signed a bill in March to force women to be anesthetized if they get an abortion after 20 weeks, causing unnecessary health risks to the mother.

The law, the first of its kind, is to ensure that the foetus does not feel “pain”. A similar law was vetoed in Montana.

4) Delays, and more delays

In Louisiana, women face a mandatory 24-hour delay when they need abortion services. This might triple to 72 hours soon if state lawmakers get their way.

There are a myriad of other house bills passing through the state senate which seek to ban second trimester pregnancies, ban abortion medication and stop women from having abortions if the foetus is discovered to have genetic abnormalities.

5) Force patients to give up more time and money

In Florida, lawmakers recently tried to force women to make at least one additional trip to the doctor before they could receive legal abortion care. It was blocked by the state supreme court.

If it had passed, it could have acted to stigmatize women and abortion providers, and impose additional travel time, costs and time off work - all virtually impossible for many low-income women.

If a women has a pregnancy which threatens her health, or the pregnancy occcured due to rape or incest, there would have been no exceptions to this rule.

6) Make women dwell on the unborn foetus

Thanks to a law in Oklahoma, abortion doctors are forced to give women seeking an abortion an ultrasound, and then display and describe the image of the foetus.

7) Imprisonment

Also in Oklahoma, if you have an abortion you could spend up to three years in prison. Republican governor Mary Fallin has just five days to sign this measure into law.

There are only two safe and legal abortion providers in the state after a Texas-style clinic shutdown.

8) Lying to patients

In Arizona, a measure which has recently been reversed would have forced doctors to lie to patients and say that it may be possible to reverse a medication abortion. The so-called junk science law has been opposed by the American Medical Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Not only that, doctors would also have advised women to follow guidance on an FDA label from the 1990s rather than use the approved, new label which reflects updated medical science.

Although the Republican governor Doug Ducey reversed these measures, it was he who signed them into law in the first place in March.

9) Ban abortions really early on

Another measure that failed to pass was in North Dakota. Politicians there wanted to ban abortions at six weeks. The supreme court refused to review it, meaning that the law has been blocked. It was described as the earliest and most extreme abortion ban in the US, besides that of Oklahoma.

10) Take away the easiest way of aborting a pregnancy - a pill

The Virginia governor has twice vetoed a measure which would force women to undergo additional, invasive surgery to abort a pregnancy rather than take a pill.

11) Take away your health care insurance

As in the case of Zubik v Burwell, various religious-affiliated organizations sought to meddle with their employees' right to access affordable insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

In November, the US supreme court heard seven cases where employers argued that the one-page form they had to fill in to allow their employees to get third party insurance coverage was a “substantial burden” on their beliefs.