The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) advocacy [website] on Thursday filed a complaint [press release] in the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama challenging three recent abortion restrictions in the state. The first restriction prevents the issuance or renewal of licenses to clinics performing abortions that are located within 2,000 feet of a K-8 public school, while the second limits the types of procedures available. The first of these bills is likely to close down [Montgomery Advertiser report] two of the state’s abortion clinics. Those two clinics accounted “for 72 percent of all abortion procedures in Alabama in 2014.” The third provision requires providers to give each patient a copy of her medical history. The organization claims the last requirement will “jeopardize the confidentiality of women seeking abortion services.” Alabama is home to almost one-million women of reproductive age. Susan Watson, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama said, “[i]t’s long past time for our elected officials to stop interfering with a woman’s personal decisions and to start dealing with the very real problems in our state.”

Abortion procedures and reproductive rights issues [JURIST backgrounder] are controversial topics throughout the US. In May Alabama banned [JURIST report] dilation and evacuation abortions. In April the ACLU and Planned Parenthood filed suit [JURIST report] against the state of Indiana, challenging the constitutionality of a recently signed abortion law. In March Utah became the first state to require doctors to administer anesthesia [JURIST report] to women receiving an abortion after 20 weeks. Also in March West Virginia lawmakers overrode the governor’s veto to enact a new law [JURIST report] that prevents the dilation and evacuation abortion procedure, widely held to be the safest second-trimester abortion method. The same day, South Dakota’s governor signed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protections Act, which bans abortions after 20 weeks.