Abortion Refusal

This safeguard indicates the religious liberty protections available for health-care providers, individuals, and institutions with respect to abortion procedures. States exhibit variation in who has the right to refuse from what negative consequences the entity is safeguarded, and whether there are limitations to those safeguards. This year we include whether states protect employees of a facility in which an abortion may be performed from being required to handle or dispose of aborted remains if that individual objects to such procedures for religious reasons. Checkmarks below indicate in which states the named entity is safeguarded, the consequences precluded, and if the safeguards are not limited in the case of medical emergency.

*A special note on public hospitals: Court cases in three states—Alaska, Minnesota, and New Jersey—have effectively eliminated state protections in abortion for public hospitals in these states. That is, these judicial rulings supersede the abortion refusal statutes cited here where they apply to public hospitals.

Note on citations:
Due to changes in online law databases and states’ websites, we cannot ensure that every link to a state law will be functional in perpetuity. If a link to a statute is no longer functional, please use a search engine to locate the state’s code and use the citation number to manually navigate to the relevant law. Where multiple laws are cited, the link is for the first law listed. For more information on citations, download the full data set which includes additional research notes.