I 
119TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. R. 12 
To protect a person’s ability to determine whether to continue or end a 
pregnancy, and to protect a health care provider’s ability to provide 
abortion services. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JUNE 24, 2025 
Ms. CHU (for herself, Ms. LOIS FRANKEL of Florida, Ms. PRESSLEY, Ms. 
ESCOBAR, Ms. ADAMS, Mr. AGUILAR, Mr. AMO, Ms. ANSARI, Mr. 
AUCHINCLOSS, Ms. BALINT, Ms. BARRAGA´N, Mrs. BEATTY, Mr. BELL, 
Mr. BERA, Mr. BEYER, Mr. BISHOP, Ms. BONAMICI, Mr. BOYLE of Penn-
sylvania, Ms. BROWN, Ms. BROWNLEY, Ms. BUDZINSKI, Ms. BYNUM, Mr. 
CARBAJAL, Mr. CARTER of Louisiana, Mr. CASAR, Mr. CASE, Mr. 
CASTEN, Ms. CASTOR
of Florida, Mr. CASTRO
of Texas, Mrs. 
CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK, Ms. CLARK of Massachusetts, Ms. CLARKE of 
New York, Mr. CLEAVER, Mr. COHEN, Mr. CONAWAY, Mr. COSTA, Ms. 
CRAIG, Ms. CROCKETT, Mr. CROW, Ms. DAVIDS of Kansas, Mr. DAVIS 
of Illinois, Ms. DEAN of Pennsylvania, Ms. DEGETTE, Ms. DELAURO, 
Ms. DELBENE, Mr. DELUZIO, Mr. DESAULNIER, Ms. DEXTER, Mrs. 
DINGELL, Mr. DOGGETT, Ms. ELFRETH, Mr. EVANS of Pennsylvania, 
Mr. FIELDS, Mrs. FLETCHER, Mr. FOSTER, Mrs. FOUSHEE, Ms. FRIED-
MAN, Mr. FROST, Mr. GARAMENDI, Ms. GARCIA of Texas, Mr. GARCIA 
of California, Mr. GARCI´A of Illinois, Ms. PEREZ, Mr. GOLDEN of Maine, 
Mr. GOLDMAN of New York, Mr. GOMEZ, Ms. GOODLANDER, Mr. 
GOTTHEIMER, Mr. GREEN of Texas, Mrs. HAYES, Mr. HIMES, Mr. 
HORSFORD, Ms. HOULAHAN, Ms. HOYLE of Oregon, Mr. HUFFMAN, Mr. 
IVEY, Ms. JACOBS, Ms. JAYAPAL, Mr. JEFFRIES, Ms. JOHNSON of Texas, 
Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia, Ms. KAMLAGER-DOVE, Ms. KAPTUR, Mr. 
KEATING, Ms. KELLY of Illinois, Mr. KENNEDY of New York, Mr. 
KHANNA, Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI, Mr. LANDSMAN, Mr. LARSEN of Wash-
ington, Mr. LARSON of Connecticut, Mr. LATIMER, Ms. LEE of Pennsyl-
vania, Ms. LEE of Nevada, Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. 
LICCARDO, Mr. LIEU, Ms. LOFGREN, Mr. LYNCH, Mr. MAGAZINER, Mr. 
MANNION, Ms. MATSUI, Mrs. MCBATH, Ms. MCBRIDE, Mrs. MCCLAIN 
DELANEY, Ms. MCCLELLAN, Ms. MCDONALD RIVET, Mr. MCGARVEY, 
Mr. MCGOVERN, Mrs. MCIVER, Mr. MEEKS, Mr. MENENDEZ, Ms. MENG, 
Mr. MFUME, Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin, Mr. MORELLE, Ms. MORRISON, 
Mr. MOSKOWITZ, Mr. MOULTON, Mr. MRVAN, Mr. MULLIN, Mr. NAD-
LER, 
Mr. 
NORCROSS, 
Ms. 
NORTON, 
Ms. 
OCASIO-CORTEZ, 
Mr. 
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OLSZEWSKI, Ms. OMAR, Mr. PALLONE, Mr. PANETTA, Mr. PAPPAS, Ms. 
PELOSI, Mr. PETERS, Ms. PETTERSEN, Ms. PINGREE, Mr. POCAN, Ms. 
POU, Mr. QUIGLEY, Mrs. RAMIREZ, Mr. RASKIN, Mr. RILEY of New 
York, Ms. RIVAS, Ms. ROSS, Mr. RUIZ, Mr. RYAN, Ms. SALINAS, Ms. 
SCANLON, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mr. SCHNEIDER, Ms. SCHOLTEN, Ms. 
SCHRIER, Mr. SCOTT of Virginia, Mr. DAVID SCOTT of Georgia, Ms. SE-
WELL, Mr. SHERMAN, Ms. SHERRILL, Ms. SIMON, Mr. SMITH of Wash-
ington, Mr. SORENSEN, Mr. SOTO, Ms. STANSBURY, Mr. STANTON, Ms. 
STEVENS, Ms. STRICKLAND, Mr. SUBRAMANYAM, Mr. SWALWELL, Mrs. 
SYKES, Mr. TAKANO, Mr. THANEDAR, Mr. THOMPSON of California, Mr. 
THOMPSON of Mississippi, Ms. TITUS, Ms. TLAIB, Ms. TOKUDA, Mr. 
TONKO, Mrs. TORRES of California, Mrs. TRAHAN, Mr. TRAN, Ms. 
UNDERWOOD, Mr. VARGAS, Mr. VASQUEZ, Mr. VEASEY, Ms. VELA´ZQUEZ, 
Mr. VINDMAN, Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN, Mr. 
WHITESIDES, Ms. WILLIAMS of Georgia, Ms. WILSON of Florida, Mr. 
TORRES of New York, Mr. CORREA, Mr. ESPAILLAT, Ms. GILLEN, Mr. 
MIN, Mr. COURTNEY, Mr. CISNEROS, Ms. SA´NCHEZ, Mr. NEGUSE, Ms. 
WATERS, and Ms. MCCOLLUM) introduced the following bill; which was 
referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to 
the Committee on the Judiciary, for a period to be subsequently deter-
mined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions 
as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 
A BILL 
To protect a person’s ability to determine whether to con-
tinue or end a pregnancy, and to protect a health care 
provider’s ability to provide abortion services. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Women’s Health Pro-
tection Act of 2025’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
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(1) Abortion services are essential health care, 
and access to those services is central to people’s 
ability to participate equally in the economic and so-
cial life of the United States. Abortion access allows 
people who are pregnant to make their own decisions 
about their pregnancies, their families, and their 
lives. 
(2) Reproductive justice requires every indi-
vidual to have the right to make their own decisions 
about having children regardless of their cir-
cumstances and without interference and discrimina-
tion. Reproductive justice is a human right that can 
and will be achieved when all people, regardless of 
actual or perceived race, color, national origin, immi-
gration status, sex (including gender identity, sex 
stereotyping, or sexual orientation), age, or disability 
status have the economic, social, and political power 
and resources to define and make decisions about 
their bodies, health, sexuality, families, and commu-
nities in all areas of their lives, with dignity and 
self-determination. 
(3) Abortion care, like all health care, is a 
human right that should not depend on one’s ZIP 
Code or region, age, actual or perceived race, na-
tional origin, immigration status, sex, or disability 
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status. Unfortunately, this is the current reality for 
millions, creating a patchwork of abortion access 
across the United States. Protecting the right to de-
termine whether to continue or end a pregnancy, 
and the right of health care providers to provide 
abortion care, is necessary and essential to achieving 
this human right, and ultimately reproductive jus-
tice. 
(4) On June 24, 2022, in its decision in Dobbs 
v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Su-
preme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, reversing dec-
ades of precedent recognizing a constitutional right 
to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability. 
(5) The effects of the Dobbs decision were im-
mediate and disastrous. In the aftermath of the 
Dobbs decision, many States imposed near-total 
bans on abortion. Within 100 days of the ruling, 66 
clinics across 15 States were forced to stop offering 
abortions. As of January 2025, abortion is unavail-
able in 14 States, leaving 17.98 million women of re-
productive age (ages 15 to 49) as well as 
transgender and gender nonconforming individuals 
without access to abortion in their home State. 
(6) Travel time to an abortion clinic, already a 
burden for abortion seekers under Roe, has quad-
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rupled since Dobbs. As distance to an abortion facil-
ity increases, so do the accompanying (and poten-
tially prohibitive) burdens of time off work or school, 
lost wages, transportation costs, lodging, child care 
costs, and other ancillary costs. 
(7) Even before the Dobbs decision, access to 
abortion services had long been obstructed across 
the United States in various ways, including: prohi-
bitions of, and restrictions on, insurance coverage; 
mandatory parental involvement laws; restrictions 
that shame and stigmatize people seeking abortion 
services; and medically unnecessary regulations that 
fail to further the safety of abortion services, but in-
stead cause harm people by delaying, complicating 
access to, and reducing the availability of, abortion 
services. 
(8) Being denied an abortion can have serious 
consequences for people’s physical, mental, and eco-
nomic health and well-being, and that of their fami-
lies. According to the Turnaway Study, a longitu-
dinal study published by Advancing New Standards 
In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) in 2019, individ-
uals who are denied a wanted abortion are more 
likely to experience economic insecurity than individ-
uals who receive a wanted abortion. After following 
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participants for five years, the study found that peo-
ple who were denied abortion care were more likely 
to live in poverty, experience debt, and have lower 
credit scores for several years after the denial. These 
findings demonstrate that when people have control 
over when to have children and how many children 
to have, their children benefit through increased eco-
nomic security and better maternal bonding. 
(9) Abortion bans and restrictions have reper-
cussions for a broad range of health care beyond 
pregnancy termination, including exacerbating the 
existing maternal health crisis facing the United 
States. The United States has the highest maternal 
mortality rate of any industrialized nation, and 
Black women and birthing people face three times 
the risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes as 
their white counterparts. Even prior to Dobbs, re-
search found that States that enacted abortion re-
strictions based on gestation increased their mater-
nal mortality rate by 38 percent. Research has 
found that a nationwide ban would increase the 
United States maternal mortality rate by an addi-
tional 24 percent. Furthermore, States that have 
banned, are planning to ban, or have severely re-
stricted abortion care have fewer maternal health 
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providers, more maternity-care deserts, higher rates 
of both maternal and infant mortality, and greater 
racial inequity in health care. 
(10) Abortion bans and restrictions additionally 
harm people’s health by reducing access to other es-
sential health care services offered by many of the 
providers targeted by the restrictions, including— 
(A) screenings and preventive services, in-
cluding contraceptive services; 
(B) testing and treatment for sexually 
transmitted infections; 
(C) LGBTQ health services; and 
(D) referrals for primary care, intimate 
partner violence prevention, prenatal care, and 
adoption services. 
(11) This ripple effect has only worsened since 
the Dobbs decision. Clinicians and pharmacists have 
denied access to essential medication for conditions, 
including gastric ulcers and autoimmune diseases, 
because those drugs are also used for medication 
abortion care. Patients are reporting being denied or 
delayed in their receipt of necessary and potentially 
lifesaving treatment for ectopic pregnancies and mis-
carriage management because of the newfound legal 
risks facing providers. 
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(12) Reproductive justice seeks to address re-
strictions on reproductive health, including abortion, 
that perpetuate systems of oppression, lack of bodily 
autonomy, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism. 
This violent legacy has manifested in policies includ-
ing enslavement, rape, and experimentation on Black 
women; forced sterilizations, medical experimen-
tation on low-income women’s reproductive systems; 
and the forcible removal of Indigenous children. Ac-
cess to equitable reproductive health care, including 
abortion services, has always been deficient in the 
United States for Black, Indigenous, Latina/x, 
Asian-American and Pacific Islander, and People of 
Color (BIPOC) and their families. 
(13) The legacy of restrictions on reproductive 
health, rights, and justice is not a dated vestige of 
a dark history. Data show the harms of abortion- 
specific restrictions fall especially heavily on people 
with low incomes, people of color, immigrants, young 
people, people with disabilities, and those living in 
rural and other medically underserved areas. Abor-
tion bans and restrictions are compounded further 
by the ongoing criminalization of people who are 
pregnant, including those who are incarcerated, liv-
ing with HIV, or with substance-use disorders. 
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These populations already experience health dispari-
ties due to social, political, and environmental in-
equities, and restrictions on abortion services exacer-
bate these harms. Removing bans and restrictions on 
abortion services would constitute one important 
step on the path toward realizing reproductive jus-
tice by ensuring that the full range of reproductive 
health care is accessible to all who need it. 
(14) Abortion bans and restrictions are tools of 
gender oppression, as they target health care serv-
ices that are used primarily by women. These pater-
nalistic bans and restrictions rely on and reinforce 
harmful stereotypes about gender roles and women’s 
decisionmaking, undermining their ability to control 
their own lives and well-being. These restrictions 
harm the basic autonomy, dignity, and equality of 
women. 
(15) The terms ‘‘woman’’ and ‘‘women’’ are 
used in this bill to reflect the identity of the majority 
of people targeted and most directly affected by bans 
and restrictions on abortion services, which are root-
ed in misogyny. However, access to abortion services 
is critical to the health of every person capable of 
becoming pregnant. This Act is intended to protect 
all people with the capacity for pregnancy— 
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cisgender women, transgender men, nonbinary indi-
viduals, those who identify with a different gender, 
and others—who are unjustly harmed by restrictions 
on abortion services. 
(16) Pregnant individuals will continue to expe-
rience a range of pregnancy outcomes, including 
abortion, miscarriage, stillbirths, and infant losses 
regardless of how the State attempts to exert power 
over their reproductive decisionmaking, and will con-
tinue to need support for their health and well-being 
through their reproductive lifespans. 
(17) Evidence from the United States and 
around the globe bears out that criminalizing abor-
tion invariably leads to arrests, investigations, and 
imprisonment of people who end their pregnancies or 
experience pregnancy loss, leading to violations of 
fundamental rights to liberty, dignity, bodily auton-
omy, equality, due process, privacy, health, and free-
dom from cruel and inhumane treatment. 
(18) All major experts in public health and 
medicine, such as the American Medical Association, 
American Public Health Association, American 
Academy of Pediatrics, American Society of Addic-
tion Medicine, and American College of Obstetri-
cians and Gynecologists, oppose the criminalization 
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of pregnancy outcomes because the threat of being 
subject to investigation or punishment through the 
criminal legal system when seeking health care 
threatens pregnant people’s lives and undermines 
public health by deterring people from seeking care 
for obstetrical emergencies. 
(19) Anti-abortion stigma that is compounded 
by abortion bans and restrictions also contributes to 
violence and harassment that put both people seek-
ing and people providing abortion care at risk. From 
1977 to 2022, there were 11 murders, 42 bombings, 
200 acts of arson, 531 assaults, 375 burglaries, and 
thousands of other incidents of criminal activity di-
rected at abortion seekers, providers, volunteers, and 
clinic staff. This violence existed under Roe and has 
been steadily escalating for years. The presence of 
dangerous protestors and organized extremists acts 
as yet another barrier to abortion care, and this 
threat has become even more urgent as abortion 
bans proliferate and stigma around abortion care in-
creases. 
(20) Abortion is one of the safest medical pro-
cedures in the United States. An independent, com-
prehensive review of the state of science on the safe-
ty and quality of abortion services, published by the 
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National Academies of Medicine in 2018, found that 
abortion in the United States is safe and effective 
and that the biggest threats to the quality of abor-
tion services in the United States are State regula-
tions that create barriers to care. Such abortion-spe-
cific restrictions, as well as broader State bans, con-
flict with medical standards and are not supported 
by the recommendations and guidelines issued by 
leading reproductive health care professional organi-
zations, including the American College of Obstetri-
cians and Gynecologists, the Society of Family Plan-
ning, the National Abortion Federation, the World 
Health Organization, and others. 
(21) For over 20 years, medication abortion 
care has been available in the United States as a 
safe, effective, Food and Drug Administration 
(FDA)-approved treatment to end an early preg-
nancy. Today, medication abortion care accounts for 
63 percent of all pregnancy terminations in the 
United States; however, significant barriers to access 
remain in place, particularly in States that have im-
posed onerous restrictions that conflict with FDA’s 
regulation of medication abortion. Additionally, op-
ponents of abortion are now deploying new tactics to 
limit access to this FDA-approved medication that 
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would set a dangerous precedent for the Federal 
regulation of medication products and have national 
repercussions. 
(22) Health care providers are subject to licens-
ing laws in various jurisdictions, which are not af-
fected by this Act except as expressly provided in 
this Act. 
(23) International human rights law recognizes 
that access to abortion is intrinsically linked to the 
rights to life, health, equality and nondiscrimination, 
privacy, and freedom from ill treatment. United Na-
tions (UN) human rights treaty monitoring bodies 
have found that legal abortion services, like other re-
productive health care services, must be available, 
accessible, affordable, acceptable, and of good qual-
ity. UN human rights treaty bodies have condemned 
criminalization of abortion and medically unneces-
sary barriers to abortion services, including manda-
tory waiting periods, biased counseling requirements, 
and third-party authorization requirements. 
(24) Core human rights treaties ratified by the 
United States protect access to abortion. For exam-
ple, in 2018, the UN Human Rights Committee, 
which oversees implementation of the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 
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made clear that the right to life, enshrined in Article 
6 of the ICCPR, at a minimum requires govern-
ments to provide safe, legal, and effective access to 
abortion where a person’s life and health are at risk, 
or when carrying a pregnancy to term would other-
wise cause substantial pain or suffering. The Com-
mittee stated that governments must not impose re-
strictions on abortion that subject women and girls 
to physical or mental pain or suffering, discriminate 
against them, arbitrarily interfere with their privacy, 
or place them at risk of undertaking unsafe abor-
tions. The Committee stated that governments 
should not apply criminal sanctions to women and 
girls who undergo abortion or to medical service pro-
viders who assist them in doing so. Furthermore, the 
Committee stated that governments should remove 
existing barriers that deny effective access to safe 
and legal abortion, refrain from introducing new 
barriers to abortion, and prevent the stigmatization 
of those seeking abortion. 
(25) International human rights experts have 
condemned the Dobbs decision and regression on 
abortion rights in the United States more generally 
as a violation of human rights. Immediately upon re-
lease of the decision, then-UN High Commissioner 
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for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet reiterated 
human rights protections for abortion and the im-
pact that the decision will have on the fundamental 
rights of millions within the United States, particu-
larly people with low incomes and people belonging 
to racial and ethnic minorities. UN independent 
human rights experts, including the UN Working 
Group on discrimination against women and girls, 
the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, 
and the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against 
women and girls, similarly denounced the decision. 
At the conclusion of a human rights review of the 
United States in August 2022, the UN Committee 
on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination noted 
deep concerns with the Dobbs decision and rec-
ommended that the United States address the dis-
parate impact that it will have on racial and ethnic 
minorities, Indigenous women, and those with low 
incomes. 
(26) Abortion bans and restrictions affect the 
cost and availability of abortion services, and the 
settings in which abortion services are delivered. 
People travel across State lines and otherwise en-
gage in interstate commerce to access this essential 
care. Likewise, health care providers travel across 
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State lines and otherwise engage in interstate com-
merce in order to provide abortion services to pa-
tients, and more would be forced to do so absent this 
Act. 
(27) Legal limitations and requirements im-
posed upon health care providers or patients invari-
ably affect commerce over which the United States 
has jurisdiction. Health care providers engage in a 
form of economic and commercial activity when they 
provide abortion services, and there is an interstate 
market for abortion services. 
(28) Abortion bans and restrictions substan-
tially affect interstate commerce in numerous ways. 
For example, to provide abortion services, health 
care providers engage in interstate commerce to pur-
chase medicine, medical equipment, and other nec-
essary goods and services. To provide and assist oth-
ers in providing abortion services, health care pro-
viders engage in interstate commerce to obtain and 
provide training. To provide abortion services, health 
care providers employ and obtain commercial serv-
ices from doctors, nurses, and other personnel who 
engage in interstate commerce, including by trav-
eling across State lines. Individuals engage in inter-
state commerce by obtaining abortion services, in-
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cluding medicine and telemedicine services offered in 
the interstate market, and traveling across State 
lines to obtain abortion services or assist others in 
obtaining such services. 
(29) As a result of the Dobbs decision and at-
tendant increase in abortion prohibitions and restric-
tions in a subset of States, there has been a signifi-
cant increase in the burden on interstate commerce. 
In just the first calendar year after Dobbs, an esti-
mated 171,000 people traveled across State lines to 
obtain abortion care, more than doubling the esti-
mated 73,100 people that traveled across State lines 
in 2019. 
(30) Congress has the authority to enact this 
Act to protect access to abortion services pursuant 
to— 
(A) its powers under the commerce clause 
of section 8 of article I of the Constitution of 
the United States; 
(B) its powers under section 5 of the Four-
teenth Amendment to the Constitution of the 
United States to enforce the provisions of sec-
tion 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment; and 
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(C) its powers under the necessary and 
proper clause of section 8 of article I of the 
Constitution of the United States. 
(31) Congress has used its authority in the past 
to protect access to abortion services and health care 
providers’ ability to provide abortion services. In the 
early 1990s, protests and blockades at health care 
facilities where abortion services were provided, and 
associated violence, increased dramatically and 
reached crisis level, requiring congressional action. 
Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic 
Entrances Act (Public Law 103–259; 108 Stat. 694) 
to address that situation and protect physical access 
to abortion services. 
(32) Congressional action is necessary to put an 
end to harmful restrictions, to protect access to 
abortion services for everyone regardless of where 
they live, to protect the ability of health care pro-
viders to provide these services in a safe and acces-
sible manner, and to eliminate unwarranted burdens 
on commerce and the right to travel. 
SEC. 3. PURPOSES. 
The purposes of this Act are as follows: 
(1) To permit people to seek and obtain abor-
tion services, and to permit health care providers to 
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provide abortion services, without harmful or unwar-
ranted limitations or requirements that— 
(A) single out the provision of abortion 
services for restrictions that are more burden-
some than those restrictions imposed on medi-
cally comparable procedures; 
(B) do not, on the basis of the weight of 
established clinical practice guidelines con-
sistent with medical evidence, significantly ad-
vance reproductive health or the safety of abor-
tion services; or 
(C) make abortion services more difficult 
to access. 
(2) To promote access to abortion services and 
thereby protect women’s ability to participate equally 
in the economic and social life of the United States. 
(3) To protect people’s ability to make decisions 
about their bodies, medical care, family, and life’s 
course. 
(4) To eliminate unwarranted burdens on com-
merce and the right to travel. Abortion bans and re-
strictions invariably affect commerce over which the 
United States has jurisdiction. Health care providers 
engage in economic and commercial activity when 
they provide abortion services. Moreover, there is an 
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interstate market for abortion services and, in order 
to provide such services, health care providers en-
gage in interstate commerce to purchase medicine, 
medical equipment, and other necessary goods and 
services; to obtain and provide training; and to em-
ploy and obtain commercial services from health care 
personnel, many of whom themselves engage in 
interstate commerce, including by traveling across 
State lines. Individuals engage in the interstate mar-
ket by purchasing abortion services, including the 
purchase, use, and consumption of medicine, medical 
equipment, and other necessary goods and services 
transited in the stream of interstate commerce, the 
receipt of telemedicine services, and traveling across 
State lines to purchase and receive abortion services 
or assist others in purchasing or receiving such serv-
ices. The increase in abortion prohibitions and re-
strictions in a subset of States since 2022 cause 
women to travel to other States for abortion care, 
which, in turn, affects the health care systems of 
those States that provide the treatment and has ex-
ponentially increased the burden on interstate com-
merce and the instrumentalities of interstate com-
merce. Congress has the authority to enact this Act 
to protect access to abortion services pursuant to— 
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(A) its powers under the commerce clause 
of section 8 of article I of the Constitution of 
the United States; 
(B) its powers under section 5 of the Four-
teenth Amendment to the Constitution of the 
United States to enforce the provisions of sec-
tion 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment; and 
(C) its powers under the necessary and 
proper clause of section 8 of article I of the 
Constitution of the United States. 
SEC. 4. DEFINITIONS. 
In this Act: 
(1) ABORTION SERVICES.—The term ‘‘abortion 
services’’ means an abortion and any medical or 
non-medical services related to and provided in con-
junction with an abortion (whether or not provided 
at the same time or on the same day as the abor-
tion). 
(2) GOVERNMENT.—The term ‘‘government’’ 
includes each branch, department, agency, instru-
mentality, and official of the United States or a 
State. 
(3) HEALTH
CARE
PROVIDER.—The term 
‘‘health care provider’’ means any entity (including 
any hospital, clinic, or pharmacy (whether physical, 
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abortion services, or facilities in which abortion serv-
ices are provided; and 
(2) impedes access to abortion services. 
(c) FACTORS FOR CONSIDERATION.—A court may 
consider the following factors, among others, in deter-
mining whether a limitation or requirement impedes ac-
cess to abortion services for purposes of subsection (b)(2): 
(1) Whether the limitation or requirement, in a 
provider’s good-faith medical judgment, interferes 
with a health care provider’s ability to provide care 
and render services, or poses a risk to the patient’s 
health or safety. 
(2) Whether the limitation or requirement is 
reasonably likely to delay or deter a patient in ac-
cessing abortion services. 
(3) Whether the limitation or requirement is 
reasonably likely to directly or indirectly increase the 
cost of providing abortion services or the cost for ob-
taining abortion services such as costs associated 
with travel, child care, or time off work. 
(4) Whether the limitation or requirement is 
reasonably likely to have the effect of necessitating 
patient travel that would not otherwise have been re-
quired, including by making it necessary for a pa-
tient to travel out of State to obtain services. 
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