Abortion Laws: All the Restrictive State Bills Proposed in 2025
Since Donald Trump and the Republicans won the 2024 election, anti-choice lawmakers have grown emboldened to propose extreme and hostile restrictions. We have already seen multiple abortion laws being introduced on the state level that are draconian in their language, terrifying in their implications, and chilling in scope.
From North Dakota, where an anti-choice lawmaker blamed infertility on God “closing” the womb of women due to legal abortion, to Oklahoma lawmakers proposing the death penalty for people who end their pregnancies, and Montana attempting to charge women who leave the state for abortions later in pregnancy with “trafficking” of their own fetus, it’s never been more crucial that we stay vigilant about our rights.
The laws are popping up seemingly every day and increasing at what feels like a rapid clip. At times, it can be hard to keep up with it all and understand what it all means, let alone how we can fight against it. And even though these abortion laws are all at the state level, and some have been voted down, they represent what anti-choice advocates are planning and thinking about and can provide insight to the fights we have ahead on a national level.
So, we at Glamour will be tracking them all year so you can keep tabs on them and stay abreast of what’s happening in real-time. We will update this story as warranted.
Are you in a state where lawmakers are proposing new abortion restrictions? Flag it to us at stephanie_mcneal@condenast.com.
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Oklahoma
Oklahoma already has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. But so-called “abolitionists” in the state Senate are attempting to take it even further, by punishing women who terminate their fetuses with the death penalty.
The bill SB 456, which was proposed by Sen. Dusty Deevers in January, would have made abortion equivalent to homicide under the law, and the woman who underwent the procedure subject to the same punishments they would face if they committed a murder. This would include life in prison and potentially death.
The bill stated that these punishments would be applicable if the person had an abortion to which they “consented” to the procedure. It also stated that the punishment would not apply to spontaneous abortion, aka miscarriage, or if the procedure was necessary to save the mother’s life. A woman could defend herself against prosecution, it further states, if she can prove she had a “reasonable belief” that her life would be at risk. The bill would also ban abortion drugs.
Currently in Oklahoma, abortion is completely banned unless it is “necessary to preserve” the life of the mother, a law that went into effect following the end of Roe v. Wade in 2022. But for the state senators, prosecuting women was a bridge too far. The state’s bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee voted down the bill on Feb. 19, the Oklahoma Voice reported. According to the newspaper, the lawmakers questioned how the bill would work in practice, as any resident who gets an abortion has to leave the state to do so and it would be hard to track who is traveling for the procedure and when.
Deevers, who in introducing the bill called women who get abortions a “protected class” of murderers, said on X that he considers the measure a success despite its failure because he got to spread his message and have a “debate.”
“Friends, this is how we win,” he wrote.
And Cindy Ngyuen, the head of the ACLU in the state, told the Oklahoma Voice she doesn’t expect this will be the last time we will see a bill of this kind.
“It tends to come up every year,” she said.
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Montana
In the 2024 election, voters in Montana overwhelmingly chose to enshrine the right to an abortion in their state Constitution, further codifying current law that allows for the procedure up to the point of fetal viability.
However, anti-choice advocates in the state were not deterred by this defeat. As first reported by journalist Jessica Valenti, four Republican lawmakers introduced a bill on Feb. 20 that would establish a “criminal offense of abortion trafficking.”
The first-of-its-kind measure would essentially target women who left the state for abortions at a later stage of pregnancy when they become illegal under Montana law (abortions after 20 weeks are extremely uncommon and are often performed due to a medical issue with the fetus). The law would not only charge the pregnant person but anyone who helped them to travel with a felony or a misdemeanor, and if charged with a felony, they could face up to five years in prison.
One of the sponsors of the bill, Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, also sponsored HB 555, which would restrict abortion-inducing medication like mifepristone. The reason? The environment, the sponsors said, and the fear that “endocrine-disrupting chemical byproducts from chemical abortion drugs” could end up in waterways.
Pro-choice advocates said this framing was frankly ridiculous.
“We have been able to assert the rights of women in our state, and in the meantime, we have proposals like this that are saying, ‘Now it's about water,’” Kelsen Young, the executive director of the Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, told KTVH. “No, if you look at the bill, this is about controlling women and controlling their reproductive access.”
Michael Siluk3/6North Dakota
In North Dakota, an anti-choice lawmaker not only introduced an incredibly restrictive personhood bill earlier this month, but she made outrageous comments about women who are infertile while trying to pass it.
According to state Republican Rep. Lori VanWinkle, women who have to rely on IVF to have a child have been cursed by God because of abortions happening in the US.
“Perhaps women are going to the IVF clinics because judgment is on their womb and God has effectively closed their womb because we are murdering massive amounts of children in our nation,” VanWinkle said, according to the North Dakota Monitor. “And if we would repent and do the right thing, maybe those people would actually get pregnant.”
VanWinkle was making these comments as a way to convince her fellow lawmakers that the fact that IVF would be outlawed under her bill was a sacrifice worth making. Her proposal would not only have established fetuses as legal people, but would have allowed for women who get abortions to be charged with murder, the newspaper reported.
The state of abortion legality in North Dakota is currently under debate. The state has attempted to pass a total abortion ban with limited exceptions, but a trial court ruled it unconstitutional last September. VanWinkle’s bill was one of four reproductive rights proposals that failed to pass the House, with one Republican lawmaker speaking up against it because of the risk it posed to women.
“This, my colleagues, is not pro-life,” Rep. Eric Murphy said, according to the North Dakota Monitor.
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West Virginia
Like the states above, West Virginia already is one of the most hostile to abortion rights in the nation. But like these other states, anti-choice lawmakers there are seeking to go further.
Several bills that would restrict abortion rights even more than the current law—a near total ban—have been introduced in the legislature, the West Virginia Watch reported. Perhaps most notably, Republican state delegate Lisa White has proposed removing the provisions allowing an abortion for rape and incest.
“I think what people are focusing on is that I don’t care about women or little kids or anything like that. That’s the furthest thing from the truth for me,” White told the news outlet. “I do believe that life begins at conception, and I cannot, in my mind, rationalize that their lives don’t matter…because this baby was conceived under horrible, horrific circumstances, it’s still a life to me.”
Some of the other bills include one that would criminally prosecute healthcare providers for providing abortion pills via telehealth and one that would require more information to be given to women seeking an abortion at their provider’s office.
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Missouri
Pro-choice advocates in Missouri got a huge win in November when voters approved a measure to bring back legal abortion to the state, enshrining the right in the state’s constitution.
In the aftermath of this decision, Republican Rep. Phil Amato in February proposed a bill that immediately raised eyebrows. HB 807 declares that the state should create a database of women who are considering terminating their pregnancies, in order to match them with potential adoptive parents.
The state, the bill states, must “make and maintain a central registry of each expecting mother who is at risk for seeking an abortion and a central registry of each prospective adoptive parent.”
The measure, dubbed “e-Harmony for babies” in the press, was meant to encourage adoption and would be voluntary, Amato said. But his fellow lawmakers, according to Missourinet, were hesitant, saying the bill opened up a whole host of concerns over privacy and “data mining.”
According to the Guardian, it’s unclear if the bill will make it very far and after backlash on social media, Amato emphasized it would be voluntary to sign up.
“The only thing the list is doing is that the expected mother volunteers to go on a list, so the potential adoptive parents can be matched up with them," he told KRCG.
Scott Olson/Getty Images6/6Iowa
In Iowa, anti-choice proponents are going after the most common way people are able to terminate their pregnancies: the abortion pill.
House File 423, introduced by Republican state Rep. Jeff Shipley, is rather vague, stating that it would “prohibit certain actions relating to abortifacient drugs in the state, and provide penalties.” But to the Des Moines Register, Shipley elaborated, saying he was seeking to make it a felony to “distribute” the pill mifepristone. Medical providers who do so could face 10 years in prison, the newspaper reported.
Currently in Iowa, abortion is banned after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they have conceived, and Shipley said he’s concerned that the pills "make it somewhat easy to circumvent the existing state law on abortions."
Mazie Stillwell, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood in the state, told the newspaper that the attacks on the pill are a way to further erode rights in the state.
"It is cruel for politicians to make medication abortion so difficult to access that women are forced to have procedural abortions or carry a pregnancy to term," she said.
