Need another case of not enough 'r's in Grrrrrrr? Arkansas to investigate women seeking abortions

Arkansas has a long history of legislation designed to make it harder for women to exercise their reproductive rights by making abortions more costly, more difficult, and more humiliating to obtain. Some of the laws, such as the ban on abortions after 12 weeks of gestation, have been blocked by the courts. But other meddling restrictions have passed constitutional muster. 

Now, besides banning dilation-and-evacuation abortions, banning medication abortion, mandating “counseling,” and setting a 48-hour waiting period, Arkansas has added investigations of the motives and medical history of some women seeking abortions—specifically to learn whether they want to terminate a pregnancy because of the sex of the fetus:

The measure purports to block abortions that are based solely on the sex of the fetus, but actually bans women from getting the procedure until their physician has put in an unspecified amount of “time and effort” obtaining her pregnancy-related medical records.

House Bill 1434 — which creates the “Sex Discrimination by Abortion Prohibition Act” — was passed by the Arkansas House of Representatives and Senate this month, and will go into effect in January 2018. It forces doctors to ask a woman if she knows the sex of the fetus and, if she does, they must then gather all medical records pertaining to her “entire pregnancy history.” Under the law, doctors are prohibited from providing a woman with an abortion until they’ve taken a “reasonable” amount of time to get the records — which could potentially result in an indefinite waiting period, the Center for Reproductive Rights noted in a statement.

In a statement, Lourdes Rivera, senior vice president of U.S. Programs at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said:

“Health care providers should never be forced to investigate patients for the reasons behind their personal, private decisions. When a woman has made the decision to end a pregnancy, she needs high-quality health care, not an interrogation.”