by Jen Swedish, Health Law Fellow,
National Women's Law Center
As you are probably aware, this is National Women’s Health Week, and the theme is “It’s Your Time.” Since Monday, my colleagues have blogged and vlogged about the importance of timing for women in health care – and health insurance coverage, in particular.
Timing is also crucial for women seeking reproductive health care services. Twenty-four states currently require women to receive counseling and then wait, usually for 24 hours, before they can receive abortion care. Proponents of these laws often argue that the counseling and waiting period is essential to ensure that a woman seriously considers the information she has been given before she decides to have an abortion. Opponents, on the other hand, contend that women are able to make informed decisions about their pregnancies without state-mandated counseling and waiting periods.
A new report from our friends at the Guttmacher Institute provides fodder for the opponents’ arguments. Guttmacher found that these laws do not, in fact, cause women to change their minds about having an abortion and, in reality, have very little impact on birth and abortion rates. A troubling finding of the report indicates that mandatory counseling and waiting period laws may actually postpone the timing of some abortions, increasing the likelihood of more expensive and less safe second-trimester procedures.
As National Women’s Health Week draws to a close, I’d like to emphasize that mandatory counseling and waiting period laws needlessly waste women’s valuable time without benefiting their health.
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