The biggest threat to Louisiana women’s ability to access quality abortion care is politicians in the state. That is the key message of a new public education campaign launched today by Lift Louisiana, a leading reproductive rights advocacy organization, and supported by the National Partnership for Women & Families. The campaign highlights findings from a new, rigorous report by the nonpartisan National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, including that abortion is safe and that medically unnecessary regulations undermine access to quality abortion care. The new campaign contrasts these findings with the fact that politicians have made abortion care tremendously challenging to access in Louisiana; a new report by the National Partnership identifies state abortion restrictions that can keep women from getting the care they need by misleading them, delaying care, requiring unnecessary tests, making care more expensive and shutting down reproductive health clinics. The campaign launches as one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion policies, a ban on abortion after 15 weeks of gestation, was recently passed by the Louisiana legislature.

The five-figure ad campaign, supported by the National Partnership, launched today. It will feature Facebook and Twitter ads, radio spots, print and digital billboards in Lafayette and Shreveport, and digital ads on the Shreveport Times and Daily Advertiser news sites.

"It is painfully clear that anti-abortion state legislators will stop at nothing to push their radical agenda, despite growing evidence that these laws harm women,” said Michelle Erenberg, director of Lift Louisiana. “It must stop. With this campaign, we’re aiming to raise awareness about our state’s dangerous abortion restrictions and how Louisianans can fight back.”

According to the National Partnership’s report, Bad Medicine: How a Political Agenda Is Undermining

Abortion Care and Access in Louisiana, Louisiana is a key offender when it comes to passing abortion restrictions that bear no relationship to medical standards; undermining health care providers’ efforts to provide the highest quality, patient-centered care; and taking decision-making away from women. For example, Louisiana abortion providers are required to give women state-drafted materials that include biased, misleading and medically unnecessary information, and to administer a mandatory ultrasound, display the image and describe it. Louisiana also has a 24-hour mandatory delay that forces women to make medically unnecessary second trips to clinics to receive abortion care; a requirement that only physicians can provide abortion care despite evidence that advanced practice clinicians, such as nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives and physician assistants, can safely and effectively provide abortion care; a requirement forcing abortion providers to share information about fake women’s health centers that deceive, mislead and shame women; a ban on providing medication abortion via telemedicine (despite evidence that it is safe and improves access to care); and other harmful restrictions.

“Abortion is health care, and every time politicians enact medically unnecessary, burdensome anti-abortion laws – as they have time and again in Louisiana – this health care is pushed further out of reach,” said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, vice president at the National Partnership. “It’s wrong and it’s harmful, and more Louisianans need to hear the truth, including from nonpartisan medical experts like those at the National Academies. We’re excited to continue to work with partners like Lift Louisiana to push for changes that will protect, instead of undermine, women’s ability to get the health care they need.”

For more information about harmful abortion restrictions in Louisiana and Lift Louisiana and the National Partnership’s campaign, visit liftlouisiana.org/truth.

Lift Louisiana is a non-profit organization that educates, advocates and litigates for policy changes needed to improve the health and wellbeing of Louisiana's women, their families, and their communities. More information is available at http://www.liftlouisiana.org

The National Partnership for Women & Families is a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group dedicated to promoting fairness in the workplace, reproductive health and rights, access to quality health care and policies that help women and men meet the dual demands of work and family. More information is available at NationalPartnership.org.