History
Alaska, California, and New Hampshire did not voluntarily provide the Center for Disease Control with abortion related data in 2000 or 2001. [1] [2] In 2014, 63% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, with 34% stating it should be illegal in all or most cases. [3]
Legislative history
Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, and New York were the only four states that made abortion legal between 1967 and 1970 that did not require a reason to request an abortion. [4] In 1970, the state repealed some of its abortion laws, along with Hawaii, New York, and Washington. [5] The following year, Alaska repealed its statute that said inducing an abortion was a criminal offense. [6] State law still required in 1971 that any woman getting a legal abortion in the state needed to be a resident for some specific period between 30 and 90 days. [6]
Some states, such as Alaska, Mississippi, West Virginia, Texas, and Kansas, have passed laws requiring abortion providers to warn patients of a link between abortion and breast cancer, and to issue other scientifically unsupported warnings. [7] [8] The state was one of 23 states in 2007 to have a detailed abortion-specific informed consent requirement. [9] Alaska and Minnesota both require that women seeking abortions after 20 weeks be informed that, while experts disagree on the issue of whether or not a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks, it is possible. This expert confusion written into the law is there, despite a Journal of the American Medical Association conclusion that pain sensors do not develop in the fetus until between weeks 23 and 30. [10]
House Bill 250 was introduced in 2017 by Rep. David Eastman (R-Wasilla). The bill was called the "Life at Conception Act", and it never made it out of committee in Alaska's House. [11] In 2017, Washington State, New Mexico, Illinois, Alaska, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey allow by state law qualified non-physicians to prescribe drugs for medical abortions only. [12] In May 2019, Eastman introduced House Bill 178, which defines abortion as "murder of an unborn child"; the bill was never heard before a committee. [11] [13]
In 2022, Governor Mike Dunleavy expressed interest in an amendment to the Alaska Constitution clarifying the legality of abortion in the state. [14] 2022 happened to be the year that Alaska's regularly scheduled ballot question for calling a state constitutional convention was asked. Dunleavy and other anti-abortion advocates recommended voting "yes", but the question was resoundingly defeated, with 70% voting "no". [15]
In 2023, the bi-partisan coalition majority in the Alaska State Senate is consensus-focused, and unlikely to address controversial topics like abortion. [16]
Judicial history
The US Supreme Court's decision in 1973's Roe v. Wade ruling meant the state could no longer regulate abortion in the first trimester. [17]
In 1997, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in Valley Hospital Association, Inc., v. Mat-Su Coalition for Choice that the privacy clause of the Alaska Constitution protects the right to an abortion. [18] This ruling remains in effect after the US Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022.
In 2016, the Alaska Supreme Court struck down a parental notification law that had been established in 2010. [19]
Clinic history
Between 1982 and 1992, the number of abortion clinics in the state decreased by 1, going from 14 in 1982 to 13 in 1992. [20] In 2014, there were 3 abortion clinics in the state. [21] 90% of the boroughs in the state did not have an abortion clinic. That year, 37% of women in the state aged 15–44 lived in a borough without an abortion clinic. [22] In March 2016, there were 4 Planned Parenthood clinics in the state. [23] There were still 4 Planned Parenthood clinics the following year, all of which offered abortion services, in a state with a population of 167,815 women aged 15–49. [24]