For the last decade, the National Institute has worked to increase access to reproductive health care facilities that provide abortion, using all the policy tools at our disposal to ensure that women are able to access the quality care they need free from fear, intimidation, and violence. Protecting access includes promoting laws and policies that protect the areas around facilities that provide abortion care, as well as efforts to ensure that so-called crisis pregnancy centers – anti-choice organizations that pose as legitimate reproductive health care facilities – are not able to deceive and manipulate women in an effort to prevent them from obtaining unbiased options counseling and timely reproductive health care, including abortion.
On the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in McCullen v. Coakley, striking down a Massachusetts law that imposed a 35-foot buffer zone around reproductive health clinics, the National Institute hosted a webinar, A Year After McCullen: Strategies for Protecting Clinic Access in Three Communities, featuring former Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, our Pennsylvania partners, and other advocates to discuss viable strategies for protecting clinics. To access that webinar, contact [email protected].
See below for some highlights on protecting clinic access.
In its 2014 decision in McCullen v. Coakley, the U.S. Supreme Court cited New York City’s clinic access law as a model.