Where all 50 states stand on abortion, in two charts

Posted by Sean Sullivan on March 7, 2013 at 2:21 pm

Arkansas lawmakers overrode a gubernatorial veto on Wednesday to approve the nation’s most restrictive abortion law, banning (with some exceptions) abortions after the twelfth week of pregnancy. Opponents have vowed to challenge the law, so its ultimate fate remains to be decided.

So how does Arkansas’s new law stack up against restrictions in the other 49 states? The following chart, from a report published earlier this month by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization that started as an arm of Planned Parenthood, provides some answers. (Click inside the chart for a larger version.) Forty states have prohibitions based on a specified stage of pregnancy, none of which are as restrictive as the law Arkansas just adopted:

The next chart — click on it to go to a larger interactive version – from Remapping Debate, which our friends over at Wonkblog flagged in January, is a useful visual representation of which states have the most abortion restrictions in place. Each color represents a different restriction category. On one end lies Oklahoma, which has many restrictions; on the other, Oregon, which has none. (The data in this chart is primarily sourced to the Guttmacher Institute).