Abortion battle shifts to U.S. states

WASHINGTON, June 8 (UPI) -- Hundreds of restrictions on abortions are being proposed in U.S. state legislatures each year as the focus shifts from Washington, analysts say.

With President Barack Obama in the White House and solid Democratic Party majorities in Congress, abortion foes have shifted their efforts to making the procedure more difficult to obtain by focusing on friendlier state governments, where anti-abortion supporters say they are feeling embattled in the wake of the slaying in Kansas of Dr. George Tiller, The Washington Post reported.

"The states are the battlegrounds and certainly the testing grounds of new kinds of restrictions," Gretchen Borchelt of the National Women's Law Center told the newspaper. "State legislatures can be more creative in what they're trying to push and see what works."

"We tried every which way, and we were successful in the state way," Terri Herring, head of Mississippi's Pro-Life America Network, told the Post. "All-or-nothing means nothing," Herring said, referring to unsuccessful efforts to have abortion outlawed at the national level. "Incremental means something."

In Mississippi, women must go twice to the clinic, at least 24 hours apart, while girls younger than 18 must have consent of both parents or a judge, the newspaper said.