Criminalized Care How Louisiana’s Abortion Bans Endanger Patients and Clinicians

In the nearly two years since the U.S.’ Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion first established in 1973 under Roe v. Wade, lawmakers across the country have introduced hundreds of state legislative bills aimed at restricting or banning legal access to this essential health care. To date, 14 states have criminalized abortion. Louisiana has been one of the most aggressive in enacting and enforcing legal bans on abortion. Even before the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022, it had one of the most restrictive and punitive anti-abortion legal frameworks in the U.S.. The state legislature enacted a trigger ban with very narrow exceptions as early as 2006 to prohibit abortion immediately if Roe were ever to be overturned. The state legislature also increased legal and professional penalties for those providing abortion care just before the Dobbs ruling. To gauge the on-the-ground human rights impacts of these escalating attacks on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy in Louisiana, four organizations—Lift Louisiana (Lift LA), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Reproductive Health Impact (RH Impact), and the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR)— conducted extensive fact-finding in Louisiana beginning in May 2023. The research, completed in November 2023, was designed to assess the impact of the abortion bans on pregnant patients and clinicians in the state. The findings contained in this report are alarming: the research shows how Louisiana’s abortion bans violate federal law meant to protect patients, disregard evidencebased public health guidance, degrade long-standing medical ethical standards, and, worst of all, deny basic human rights to Louisianans seeking reproductive health care in their state.