Health-Care Provision: Abortion Refusal

This safeguard indicates the religious liberty protections available for health-care providers, individuals, and institutions with respect to abortion procedures. States exhibit variation in who has the right to refuse from what negative consequences the entity is safeguarded, and whether there are limitations to those safeguards. Checkmarks below indicate in which states the named entity is safeguarded, the consequences precluded, and if the safeguards are not limited in the case of medical emergency.

*A special note on public hospitals: Court cases in three states—Alaska, Minnesota, and New Jersey—have effectively eliminated refusal rights in abortion for public hospitals in these states. That is, these judicial rulings supersede the abortion refusal statutes cited here where they apply to public hospitals.