Setting a Big TRAP

In Governing's February issue, I wrote (2nd item) that despite all the hand-wringing in Washington over whether Samuel Alito and the Supremes would repeal Roe v. Wade, the real action in abortion politics is in the states. Knowing that a frontal assault on Roe is bound to fail, at least for now, abortion opponents have pursued an incremental but successful strategy of limiting abortions by putting more and more restrictions on the procedure.

I hadn't picked up on the fact that this strategy is so prevalent that it's accumulated its own acronym -- TRAP, or "targeted regulation of abortion providers." Abortion opponents set a big TRAP in Indiana, where the state House last week voted to tighten a set of existing rules dictating much of the physical infrastructure of abortion clinics.

The General Assembly approved the original rules last year. They include requirements for equipment rooms, dictate the widths of doors and corridors and set other standards for procedure rooms and other physical plant. The rules are to take effect next year, but Indiana's nine abortion clinics are to be grandfathered in.

Now, House members have voted to not allow exemptions for the existing facilities. If the Senate approves the action and Governor Mitch Daniels signs the new measure, all of the state's abortion clinics are certain to shut down, lacking the time and money to meet the requirements by the January 1 deadline.

For that reason, even an anti-abortion Democrat, state Representative Peggy Welch, voted against the bill. She told the Indianapolis Star that it would inevitably trigger a lawsuit and stymie any attempt to regulate clinics. Abortion rights advocates, meanwhile, complain that the same standards aren't being imposed on, for instance, podiatrists.

For or against abortion rights, this latest measure shows the power of a well-set TRAP.