Anti-Abortion Activists Target State Battlegrounds

With President Obama in office, abortion is unlikely to become illegal under federal law anytime soon. So activists are taking their battle to the state level, pushing for complex rules and limits that make the procedure difficult to obtain, the Washington Post reports. "The states are the battlegrounds and certainly the testing grounds of new kinds of restrictions," said a lawyer for an abortion-rights group.

Mississippi, one of the most restrictive states, has only one abortion clinic. Law requires a 24-hour waiting period, and little public money is available. "We've got a glut of bills we fight every year," said a staffer at Planned Parenthood, which no longer performs abortions in the state. "Mississippi clearly has done all that we can within our current legal culture to end abortion here," an anti-abortion activist said.
(More abortion stories.)