Since Donald Trump and the Republicans won the 2024 election, anti-choice lawmakers have grown emboldened to propose extreme and hostile restrictions. We have already seen multiple abortion laws being introduced on the state level that are draconian in their language, terrifying in their implications, and chilling in scope.
From North Dakota, where an anti-choice lawmaker blamed infertility on God “closing” the womb of women due to legal abortion, to Oklahoma lawmakers proposing the death penalty for people who end their pregnancies, and Montana attempting to charge women who leave the state for abortions later in pregnancy with “trafficking” of their own fetus, it’s never been more crucial that we stay vigilant about our rights.
The laws are popping up seemingly every day and increasing at what feels like a rapid clip. At times, it can be hard to keep up with it all and understand what it all means, let alone how we can fight against it. And even though these abortion laws are all at the state level, and some have been voted down, they represent what anti-choice advocates are planning and thinking about and can provide insight to the fights we have ahead on a national level.
So, we at Glamour will be tracking them all year so you can keep tabs on them and stay abreast of what’s happening in real-time. We will update this story as warranted.
Are you in a state where lawmakers are proposing new abortion restrictions? Flag it to us at [email protected].
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Oklahoma
Oklahoma already has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. But so-called “abolitionists” in the state Senate are attempting to take it even further, by punishing women who terminate their fetuses with the death penalty.
The bill SB 456, which was proposed by Sen. Dusty Deevers in January, would have made abortion equivalent to homicide under the law, and the woman who underwent the procedure subject to the same punishments they would face if they committed a murder. This would include life in prison and potentially death.
The bill stated that these punishments would be applicable if the person had an abortion to which they “consented” to the procedure. It also stated that the punishment would not apply to spontaneous abortion, aka miscarriage, or if the procedure was necessary to save the mother’s life. A woman could defend herself against prosecution, it further states, if she can prove she had a “reasonable belief” that her life would be at risk. The bill would also ban abortion drugs.
Currently in Oklahoma, abortion is completely banned unless it is “necessary to preserve” the life of the mother, a law that went into effect following the end of Roe v. Wade in 2022. But for the state senators, prosecuting women was a bridge too far. The state’s bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee voted down the bill on Feb. 19, the Oklahoma Voice reported. According to the newspaper, the lawmakers questioned how the bill would work in practice, as any resident who gets an abortion has to leave the state to do so and it would be hard to track who is traveling for the procedure and when.
Deevers, who in introducing the bill called women who get abortions a “protected class” of murderers, said on X that he considers the measure a success despite its failure because he got to spread his message and have a “debate.”
“Friends, this is how we win,” he wrote.
And Cindy Ngyuen, the head of the ACLU in the state, told the Oklahoma Voice she doesn’t expect this will be the last time we will see a bill of this kind.
“It tends to come up every year,” she said.
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Montana
In the 2024 election, voters in Montana overwhelmingly chose to enshrine the right to an abortion in their state Constitution, further codifying current law that allows for the procedure up to the point of fetal viability.
However, anti-choice advocates in the state were not deterred by this defeat. As first reported by journalist Jessica Valenti, four Republican lawmakers introduced a bill on Feb. 20 that would establish a “criminal offense of abortion trafficking.”
The first-of-its-kind measure would essentially target women who left the state for abortions at a later stage of pregnancy when they become illegal under Montana law (abortions after 20 weeks are extremely uncommon and are often performed due to a medical issue with the fetus). The law would not only charge the pregnant person but anyone who helped them to travel with a felony or a misdemeanor, and if charged with a felony, they could face up to five years in prison.
One of the sponsors of the bill, Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, also sponsored HB 555, which would restrict abortion-inducing medication like mifepristone. The reason? The environment, the sponsors said, and the fear that “endocrine-disrupting chemical byproducts from chemical abortion drugs” could end up in waterways.
Pro-choice advocates said this framing was frankly ridiculous.
“We have been able to assert the rights of women in our state, and in the meantime, we have proposals like this that are saying, ‘Now it’s about water,’” Kelsen Young, the executive director of the Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, told KTVH. “No, if you look at the bill, this is about controlling women and controlling their reproductive access.”
