The Washington Post surveys the continuing onslaught against reproductive health rights across the board, concluding that

This year’s state legislative season draws to a close having produced a near-record number of laws imposing new restrictions on a woman’s access to abortion or contraception. . . .

“Every year, we see a lot of legislation introduced,” said Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research group that specializes in family and reproductive health. “This year, we have seen a lot more action than in recent years. The level of bills enacted has been much higher.”

Read the article for the whole dismaying list.

The Post does a good job highlighting the general strategies the right wing is now - quite openly -pursuing: “death by 1000 cuts” and a continuing move to sneak “fetal personhood” into the law.

David Bereit, director of program development for the American Life League, which opposes abortion in all circumstances, supports both the short-term efforts and the long-term strategy aimed at overturning Roe v. Wade .

“People are becoming frustrated more progress hasn’t been made at the federal level and feel they don’t have as much control to change things there,” he said. “If we can’t outright ban abortion, what can we do to make it less prevalent? We see it’s much easier to take up funding and parental notification measures at the state level.” . . .

“This year, the pro-life forces united in order to pass some legislation,” Greenfield said. The other measures include stricter parental notification requirements and a provision adding an “unborn child” as a distinct victim to the state’s criminal code for charges of murder in the first and second degree. In its new informed-consent law, South Dakota requires physicians to tell women seeking an abortion about the “existing relationship between a pregnant woman and her unborn child,” and that all abortions “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.”

The language in that law was written with the expectation it could be used to “help tear down the wall put up by the Roe versus Wade decision,” Greenfield said. . . .

In its end-of-the-session newsletter, Texas Right to Life hinted at the variety of approaches its side pursued.

Supporters “did not muster the strength to pass any of the multiple freestanding pro-life bills,” it noted. However, “several major pro-life victories came in the form of ‘under the radar’ amendments.” Those included measures to shift state money to abortion alternatives and health care for unborn children, stricter parental consent requirements and a ban on third-trimester abortions “when the abortion is not necessary to prevent the death of the woman.”

The handwriting has never been more clearly on the wall, and the right wingers have become unusually confident during this current - temporary - reactionary swing. Not only are their tactics unmistakeable, but they’re telling us about them. It’s vital to organize to hold the tenuous freedoms that have so far been won.

As Jessica at Feministing says: ‘[S]eeing all of the horribleness i[n] one article is quite something.”