This article in the Journal of Law and Health explores the changes in abortion laws including abortion bans and related penalties, interstate shield laws, and data privacy protections, from June 1, 2022 through January 1, 2023.
On an array of health concerns, policymakers have rejected science in favor of lawmaking based on ideology, politics, and religion, to the detriment of public health. This is particularly true of stigmatized health areas such as reproductive health, and especially abortion care.
On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned nearly 50 years of precedent protecting the right to an abortion prior to viability. Under Roe v. Wade, the legal landscape of abortion was a complex patchwork of state laws and court decisions regulating access to the procedure. The Dobbs decision further compromised abortion access by allowing states to ban all or most abortions.
The Center for Public Health Law Research is home to one of the leading research teams focused on understanding the role and effects of laws related to sexual and reproductive health on population health, well-being, and equity. The Center’s resources reflect the varied and ever-changing landscape of regulations and restrictions on abortion, access to contraception, and other issues related to sexual and reproductive health in the United States and worldwide.
Published in the American Journal of Public Health, this editorial, written by CPHLR Research Fellow and Temple Beasley School of Law faculty member Patty Skuster, JD, MPP, and Heidi Moseson, PhD, MPH, explores the legal risk remaining for at-home medication abortion.
This paper, published in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, analyzes provisions that do not account for the prevalence of self-managed abortion and evidence of its safety. Such provisions require that abortion take place in a formal healthcare setting. The researchers also analyzed criminal penalties for non-compliance.
This panel series will explore the interplay between empirical evidence on the safety and efficacy of self-managed abortion and laws, policies, and their application.
This dataset provides a general overview of 15 regulatory areas related to abortion in the United States, and includes laws, case law, and attorney general opinions in effect as of October 1, 2021.
The Identifying Data for the Empirical Assessment of Law (IDEAL) method, developed by a team of academics, lawyers, reproductive health experts and law students, follows three steps to support the development of evidence-based guidelines and practice related to abortion law. The process identifies social science and epidemiological evidence that does not explicitly address the law, but can nonetheless enhance the understanding of legal effects and identify research gaps and priority research topics.
