• Abortion: A medical procedure that ends a pregnancy. Abortion is common, safe, and highly regulated in the United States. It can be provided through medication or procedural methods depending on gestational age and medical circumstances.
• Abortion ban: A law that prohibits abortion either entirely or after a specified point in pregnancy. Bans may include narrow exceptions (such as life of the pregnant person), which often fail to function in practice due to vague legal standards and provider fear of prosecution.
• Abortion care: A broad term encompassing abortion services as well as related counseling, follow-up care, and management of miscarriage and pregnancy complications. Abortion care is part of comprehensive reproductive healthcare.
• Abortion exceptionalism: The practice of regulating abortion more strictly than comparable medical procedures, often without medical justification. This includes special licensing, reporting, and facility requirements that do not apply to other outpatient healthcare.
• Abortion Pill/Medication Abortion: A method of ending a pregnancy using FDA-approved medications, typically mifepristone followed by misoprostol, or misoprostol alone. The pregnancy is ended and expelled using medication, not a procedure or surgery. It is less invasive. Medication abortion is safe, effective, and widely used in early pregnancy.
• Abortion surveillance: Government-mandated data collection about abortion patients or providers. Surveillance can pose privacy risks, particularly in hostile legal environments, and may deter people from seeking care.
• Abortion stigma: Negative beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors directed at people who seek or provide abortion care. Stigma can influence public discourse, policymaking, and media framing.
• Bodily autonomy: The right of individuals to make decisions about their own bodies without coercion or interference. Bodily autonomy is a foundational principle in medical ethics and reproductive rights.
• Care infrastructure: The network of systems—healthcare, childcare, transportation, insurance, paid leave—that enables people to access and sustain health and wellbeing. Reproductive justice advocates emphasize that abortion access is inseparable from broader care infrastructure.
• Conscience clause: A legal provision allowing healthcare providers or institutions to refuse to provide certain services, including abortion, based on moral or religious objections. These clauses can restrict access, especially in rural or underserved areas.
• Criminalization of pregnancy: The use of criminal law to punish people for pregnancy outcomes, behaviors during pregnancy, or self-managed abortion. Criminalization disproportionately impacts low-income people and people of color.
• Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC): Facilities that present themselves as healthcare clinics but typically do not provide abortion or contraception and often disseminate misleading or false information about abortion.
• Dilation and Curettage (D+C): A medical procedure in which the cervix is dilated and the uterine lining is removed.
• Dilation and Evacuation (D+E): A medical procedure typically performed in the second trimester in which the cervix is dilated and the uterine contents are removed.
• Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022): The U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion and allowing states to ban abortion entirely.
• Fetal personhood: A legal or political concept that seeks to grant embryos or fetuses independent legal rights. Personhood laws can criminalize abortion, miscarriage management, IVF, and some forms of contraception.
• Gestational age: The length of a pregnancy. Medically, this age is measured from the first day of the last menstrual period. Gestational age is used to determine clinical options and legal restrictions.
• Hyde Amendment: A federal policy that bans the use of federal funds for abortion care, except in extremely limited circumstances. Hyde disproportionately affects people who rely on Medicaid and other public insurance programs.
• Induction of labor: A medical process in which labor is artificially stimulated before it begins on its own. Often used in cases of fetal anomaly, maternal health risk, or fetal death in utero.
• Informed consent laws: State laws that require abortion providers to deliver state-mandated information, which may include medically inaccurate or ideologically motivated content, prior to providing care.
• Interstate abortion travel: The act of traveling across state lines to obtain abortion care due to local restrictions. Travel burdens increase costs, delay care, and widen inequities.
• Judicial bypass: A legal process allowing minors to obtain an abortion without parental consent by seeking approval from a judge. The process can be intimidating, inconsistent, and time-sensitive.
• Maternal mortality: Deaths related to pregnancy or childbirth. The U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among wealthy nations, with significant racial disparities—context often omitted in abortion reporting.
• Medical emergency exception: A narrow legal exception permitting abortion when a pregnant person’s life is deemed at risk. These exceptions are often vaguely defined, creating delays and confusion in medical settings.
• Mifepristone: An FDA-approved medication used in medication abortion and miscarriage management. It has been extensively studied and has a strong safety record. It stops the pregnancy from continuing to grow.
• Misoprostol: Taken after Mifepristone. This medicine causes your uterus to contract, bleed, and expel the pregnancy.
• Miscarriage management: Medical care provided after pregnancy loss. Abortion restrictions can delay or deny miscarriage care, as the same medications and procedures are often used.
• Parental consent/Notification laws: Laws requiring minors to obtain permission from or notify a parent before receiving abortion care. Research shows these laws do not reduce abortion rates but increase delays.
• Procedural abortion: also known as a surgical or in-clinic abortion, is a safe medical procedure to end a pregnancy by using suction, and sometimes other tools, to empty the uterus, typically taking only a few minutes but requiring several hours at the clinic for preparation and recovery
• Provider shield laws: State laws designed to protect healthcare providers who offer abortion care to patients from states where abortion is banned, particularly in telehealth contexts.
• Reproductive coercion: Behavior that interferes with a person’s autonomous decision-making about reproduction, including pressure to become pregnant, terminate a pregnancy, or avoid contraception.
• Reproductive health: A state of physical, mental, and social wellbeing related to reproductive systems and processes. This includes contraception, abortion, pregnancy care, STI treatment, and fertility services.
• Reproductive Justice: A framework developed by Black women activists that centers three core rights:
  
  • The right to have children
  • The right not to have children
  • The right to parent children in safe and sustainable communities

Reproductive justice integrates race, class, gender, and structural inequality into reproductive policy analysis.

• Roe v. Wade (1973): The Supreme Court decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion before being overturned in 2022. Roe established viability-based protections that shaped abortion access for nearly 50 years.
• Self-managed abortion: The act of ending a pregnancy outside a clinical setting, often using medication. While safe when done with accurate information, self-managed abortion is legally risky in some states.
• Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) Laws: Regulations that impose medically unnecessary requirements on abortion providers, such as hospital admitting privileges or surgical center standards, to reduce access.
• Telehealth abortion: The provision of abortion care through remote medical consultation, typically for medication abortion. Telehealth increases access, particularly in rural areas.
• Trigger law: A law designed to automatically ban abortion if federal protections are overturned. Many trigger laws went into effect immediately after the Dobbs decision.
• Viability: The point at which a fetus can survive outside the uterus with medical support. Viability varies by pregnancy and medical context and is not a fixed gestational age.
• Waiting period: A state-mandated delay, typically 24 to 72 hours, between a patient’s initial abortion consultation and the procedure itself.
• Whole-patient care: A healthcare approach that considers the full range of a patient’s medical, emotional, social, and economic needs. Abortion access is often framed within whole-patient care models.