Law and policy
Medical facts and legal rules are different things, decided by different processes. This section explains that difference, describes the rules this publication follows before it will summarise any law, and points to the official record.
This section is general information about how abortion law works and where to read it. It is not legal advice, and nothing here is a statement of what the law is where you are.
Two different questions
What a procedure involves, what the evidence says about it, and what recovery generally looks like are medical questions. They are answered by clinical evidence, and they do not change when a legislature votes.
What is permitted where you live is a legal question. It is decided by state legislatures, courts, ballot measures, and state officials, and it can change quickly. A page that mixes the two produces a document that is misleading about both.
That is why this site keeps them apart, and why nothing on a clinical page here tells you what you are allowed to do.
What this section does not publish yet
There are no state-by-state legal summaries on this site at present.
That is deliberate. A stale legal summary is worse than no summary, because a reader who believes it may act on it. This publication will not publish a jurisdiction page until three things exist at the same time: a named legal reviewer accountable for it, automated monitoring of the official sources behind it, and a person verifying it on the schedule set out below.
The rules a legal page here has to follow
- It never reduces the law to one unqualified word such as legal or illegal.
- It shows when it was last verified, with a date, a time, and a time zone, and it keeps the effective date, the decision date, and the page update date separate.
- It states the scope it is describing: residents, services provided in the state, telehealth, minors, travel, or something else.
- It links the current state code, regulation, court order, health department, and attorney general material rather than replacing them.
- It names the person accountable for it.
- It says plainly that it is general information rather than legal advice.
What happens when a legal page goes unverified
The verification schedule is enforced by the site itself rather than by good intentions. Each response is checked against the clock when it is served.
- After 7 days without human verification, the page shows a caution state.
- After 14 days, the legal summary is removed, only the official links remain, and the page is taken out of search listings.
This happens at the moment a page is requested, so it does not depend on anyone rebuilding or redeploying the site. A page that has been forgotten fails closed.
Where to read the law and where to get advice
For the law itself, the state legislature, the state code, the state health department, and the state attorney general publish the official record. Secondary trackers are useful for spotting that something has changed, and they are not a substitute for the record.
For advice about your own situation, the Repro Legal Helpline (opens reprolegalhelpline.org) offers free confidential legal help. This publication cannot answer legal questions and will not try.
What this site will never do
It will not tell anyone how to avoid law enforcement, customs, or a medical system. It will not turn an election result, a bill introduction, a court filing, or a press release into a statement that the law has changed. And it will not treat a legal restriction as a medical fact.