Upcoming Frontline: The Last Abortion Clinic
From the website:
..."According to one abortion provider in the South, who prefers to remain anonymous: "The assault on abortion rights is very clever. It's very smart. And we are losing."
"In the summer of 2005 -- more than 30 years after Roe v. Wade established that access to abortion services is a fundamental right -- a FRONTLINE documentary team spent two months traveling across the South where states have been particularly active in passing restrictions on abortion. In interviews with abortion providers and their patients, staff at a pro-life pregnancy counseling center and key legal strategists on both sides of the national debate, FRONTLINE producer Raney Aronson (The Jesus Factor) documents the success of the pro-life movement and the growing number of states with regulations limiting access to abortion.
"FRONTLINE tracks how this happened over the past decade -- how it can all be traced back to a critical 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey. While the Court upheld Roe v. Wade, it changed the standard by which abortion laws would be judged. It allowed states to regulate abortion so long as they did not place an "undue burden" on the women seeking the procedure....
"In the years after Casey, the pro-life movement has dramatically changed the landscape of abortion politics. In Mississippi alone, they helped pass 10 laws regulating abortion. And in the last two years, the state has passed legislation on fetal homicide prosecution, new clinic regulations, requirements to report abortion complications, rights of conscience, and a law that would prohibit the state's last abortion clinic from offering abortions beyond the first trimester.
"Americans United for Life (AUL), the nation's oldest national pro-life organization, considers Mississippi an example for the nation. "Mississippi has an impressive track record," says AUL senior legal counsel Clarke Forsythe. "Our goal is to see that other states pass the type of legislation that Mississippi has passed over the past decade, and we see a lot of legislative activity."
"With an ever-increasing number of state abortion regulations and a steady decline in abortion providers, the procedure, while still legal, has become daunting and expensive in Mississippi and elsewhere. Nationwide, there are now fewer abortion providers in the U.S. than at any time since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 -- 87 percent of U.S. counties don't have one...."