How the legal debate is shaping up nationally

NEW YORK — While the national abortion debate is now focused on the Supreme Court, both sides expect crucial battles to unfold this year on the state level.

Lawmakers in two states are proposing broad abortion bans they hope will eventually win approval from a reconfigured, more conservative high court. Legislators elsewhere are seeking to tighten a range of abortion restrictions; one leading liberal advocacy group gave 19 states a failing grade on reproductive rights in a national status report issued Wednesday.

"It's a picking away at our freedom and privacy, legislature by legislature, law by law, with the ultimate goal of overturning Roe v. Wade," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Among the states getting F's in NARAL's report are Indiana and Ohio, where conservative lawmakers are introducing bills to ban abortion outright. They hope their measures become law and then face legal challenges that lead to a Supreme Court reconsideration of the 1973 Roe ruling that established abortion rights nationwide.

It remains unclear how far the proposed Indiana or Ohio bans will progress.

According to the NARAL report, state legislatures enacted 58 measures in 2005 that restricted access to abortion, double the number in 2004.

Measures enacted last year or under consideration this year include counseling requirements or waiting periods before women can have an abortion, tightening of parental-involvement laws, and extra layers of regulations for abortion clinics. A bill endorsed Wednesday by an Arizona legislative committee would require doctors to tell women seeking abortions that their fetuses could experience pain even if the women receive pain medication.

Though worried by the surge of such restrictive laws, Keenan said she was heartened that many states were passing "pro-choice" laws to ensure that women have access to emergency contraception and that require health-insurance companies to cover birth control.

She noted that even some conservative-leaning "red states" — such as Montana and Nevada — had won high grades from NARAL for their overall approach to reproductive rights.

"The issue there is about the right to privacy, it's about freedom," she said. "It's about keeping the government out of our most private decisions."

The 11 states receiving A's from NARAL were Alaska, California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

Those getting F's were Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. NARAL predicts that most of these states, and probably some others, would ban abortions if Roe were overturned.