DN Editorial: ROE V. DOUGH

A NEW study about abortion makes it clearer than ever that it's becoming a luxury that only the wealthy will be able to afford. New draconian state laws are forcing so many abortion facilities to close that only women who can afford to travel will be able to access the procedure.

The Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization, has reported that more abortion restrictions were enacted in the United States in the past three years than during the previous decade. Some 22 states enacted 70 laws curtailing abortion rights last year alone.

The number of states that are considered hostile to abortion because of restrictive laws has more than doubled - from 13 to 27 - since 2000. (Pennsylvania is among them, of course.) And that means that more than half the women in the country now live in states with arbitrary laws designed to make getting an abortion just about impossible.

Take Texas, for example, where laws passed there last summer:

* Ban all abortions after 20 weeks, a provision in clear violation of Roe v. Wade, which sets fetal viability as the threshold, usually around 24 weeks.

* Require abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, which caused so many abortion clinics to close that whole areas of south Texas have no providers.

* Imposed expensive surgery-center standards on abortion clinics, even on those that only perform medical, nonsurgical procedures.

So many states have enacted similar laws that a pro-choice leader noted that "increasingly, access to abortion depends on where you live." Obviously, then, only women with resources will be able to travel to places where they can get abortions - just like the days prior to Roe, when each state had its own abortion laws.

Which means that low-income women who can't afford the fare, can't afford the hotel, can't afford to miss work and can't afford babysitters for their children will face possibly insurmountable hurdles to accessing their constitutional right.

So many states have enacted constitutionally questionable limits on abortion that the issue is clearly headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, the hope that Roe will survive resides in Justice Anthony Kennedy, the so-called swing vote between the four anti-abortion and four pro-choice justices.

But the website Slate points out, ominously, that while Kennedy reaffirmed Roe in 1992, he also has upheld 20 of 21 abortion restrictions, including a 24-hour waiting period, a prohibition on public funding and other limitations that are hostile to women's rights. Kennedy is anything but a guaranteed vote.

Pro-choice supporters are not, of course, giving up. They note that the Texas laws that restricted abortion gave rise to the political future of state senator and now gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis; that a referendum to impose a 20-week ban in Albuquerque was defeated; and that a few states have passed laws expanding access to abortion, including California.

Clearly, though, Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance. And so does the potential for abortion to become another inaccessible luxury in a country already deeply afflicted by inequity.