Missouri may lose its last abortion clinic this week. That's dark news for us all | Jill Filipovic

Anti-abortion activists know that you don ’t need to outlaw abortion outright if you can make getting a safe, legal one nearly impossibleBy the end of the week,women in Missouri may live in a state without a single abortion clinic. While restrictive laws in states like Alabama have made headlines, Missouri shows the other side of the anti-abortion strategy: steadily shave away at abortion rights. You don ’t need to outlaw the procedure outright if you can make getting a safe, legal one nearly impossible.The reason there ’s only one remaining clinic in Missouri in the first place is because the state has tried to regulate abortion out of existence. A series of unnecessary rules and regulations makes it harder both for women to access abortions and for medical professionals to provide them. Missouri’s misogynisti c laws already don’t trust women to make their own decisions – they mandate that any woman seeking an abortion in the state has to come to a clinic, request the procedure, and then go home and think about it for three days before it can be legally proffered. They also require that young people u nder the age of 18 notify both parents and get the notarized consent of at least one parent before they can terminate a pregnancy – a serious hardship for girls who live with abuse, or who don’t have a good relationship with their parents, or who don’t want to be mothers but want to keep their medical decisions private.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Abortion Reproduction Reproductive rights Missouri Roe v Wade Health Science Source Type: news