After 'Pivotal Year' for Reproductive Rights, Advocates Ready for Trump-Era Battles

2016 was a “pivotal year” for women’s health, according to a 50-state report card released Monday by the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR)—and given signals from the incoming Trump administration, “2017 will undoubtedly bring new challenges and new opportunities for action.”

This year brought a historic U.S. Supreme Court victory in Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, which CRR president Nancy Northup described as “the most important abortion rights ruling in a generation.” The decision struck a major blow to the more than 300 abortion restrictions—also known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP, laws—enacted by state legislatures since 2011. 

But 2016 also saw the enactment of at least 60 bills restricting access to reproductive healthcare across the country, and the introduction of hundreds more—including nearly 100 bills linked to the smear campaign against Planned Parenthood alone.

These included Flordia’s HB 1411, “a harmful omnibus anti-abortion law that places additional restrictions and onerous requirements on abortion providers, jeopardizing their ability to provide reproductive healthcare services,” according to CRR; Louisiana’s “unprecedented” seven bills restricting abortion (the most passed by any state in 2016); and Oklahoma’s “Humanity of the Unborn Child Act,” which requires the state Department of Health to develop and distribute materials “for the purpose of achieving an abortion-free society.”