On June 24th, 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. Although many states had laws prohibiting certain abortions before that decision – including gestational age bans, reason-based bans, and method bans – most of those laws were blocked by courts to the extent they restricted pre-viability abortions. Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, several states’ pre-viability bans have gone into effect. This dataset explores abortion bans in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia in effect from December 1, 2018 through November 1, 2022, as well as case law and attorney general opinions that affect the enforceability of these laws.
This dataset is a part of a suite of 17 datasets created by the Center for Public Health Law Research in collaboration with subject matter experts from Resources for Abortion Delivery (RAD), Guttmacher Institute, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), National Abortion Federation (NAF), and Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), who conceptualized and developed the Abortion Law Database. If you need broader contextual information on state laws and policies, national level information, or data and evidence related to abortion and other reproductive health issues, please contact the Guttmacher Institute at info@guttmacher.org.
Disclaimer: The information contained herein does not constitute legal advice. If you have questions regarding your legal rights or obligations, contact an attorney. If you are an abortion provider seeking legal compliance guidance, the following collaborating organizations may be able to assist you: ACLU, CRR, PPFA (for affiliated health centers), NAF, and Regulatory Assistance for Abortion Providers (a project of RAD).
If you have any questions about the information provided here, please contact LawAtlas@temple.edu or RAAP@radprogram.org.
**Note: CPHLR is working collaboratively with Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) on the NICHD-funded Legal Epidemiology of Abortion Policies (LEAP) Study to build longitudinal abortion policy data covering changes from 2005 through 2022. These data will be publicly released on LawAtlas.org upon completion of the project period anticipated in 2027. To learn more about the LEAP Study, please visit the study webpage.
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