Tucson Women’s Clinic v. Eden (Arizona, USA)
The Center filed a federal challenge to Arizona's licensing and regulatory scheme targeted specifically at health-care providers that perform abortions. These regulations deny equal protection to women who seek, and physicians who provide abortions. Although a federal judge, in October 2002, struck down the more egregious provisions of the law, particularly a regulation that would have allowed Arizona’s Department of Health to conduct warrantless inspections of abortion providers’ offices, both providers and women who seek abortions still face burdensome regulations and violations of confidentiality.

Springfield Healthcare Center v. Nixon(Missouri, USA)
On September 15th, 2005, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri against a new law that will force the only abortion clinic in southwest Missouri to stop providing abortions. The law requires physicians performing abortion procedures to obtain privileges at a local hospital. Because the doctor in Springfield Healthcare Center Inc. does not have these privileges and it is unclear when he will receive them, the facility may have to shut down its abortion services.

Springfield Healthcare Center is licensed as an ambulatory surgical facility and performs 1,500 abortions a year. Current Missouri law requires that physicians at all ambulatory surgical facilities have admitting privileges at a local hospital or the facility maintain a written agreement with a hospital to transfer patients when it is needed. Springfield Healthcare has agreements with two local hospitals.

But according to the lawsuit, the new law imposes the additional and unnecessary requirement that says the facility’s doctor must have admitting privileges to a hospital within 30 miles. Abortions are the only procedure performed at ambulatory surgical facilities in Missouri that are subject to this additional requirement.

In addition, women in the southwest part of the state will be forced to travel six to eight hours roundtrip to obtain an abortion at the nearest clinic in Columbia, Missouri. As the suit claims, such a trip will be particularly burdensome for women with limited financial resources and childcare needs, women without access to transportation, and women in abusive relationships.