TRAP Laws' Agenda: Shut Down Abortion Providers

Guttmacher Institute: TRAP Laws Gain Political Traction While Abortion Clinics - and the Women They Serve - Pay the Price, by Rachel Benson Gold & Elizabeth Nash:

Waiting periods. Inaccurate counseling scripts. State-mandated ultrasounds. Over the years, these have been among the many favored obstacles antiabortion activists have thrown in the path of women seeking to terminate their pregnancies—all under the guise of protecting women’s health. Hundreds of these requirements are now law across the country at the state level. And at this point, having mostly exhausted legal means of discouraging women from choosing abortion, opponents recently have stepped up their efforts to block clinics from providing them. More than half the states now have laws instituting onerous and irrelevant licensing requirements, known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider (TRAP) laws, which have nothing to do with protecting women and everything to do with shutting down clinics. . . .