News coverage of laws regulating abortion clinics lends credence to bogus myths about abortion being unsafe, contributing to a wave of clinic closures that’s threatening abortion access across the country.

Abortion is one of the safest common medical procedures in the United States: safer than childbirth, safer than a colonoscopy, and safer than wisdom teeth removal. In many cases, abortions are non-surgical -- completed through medication rather than surgery.

Despite the safety of legal abortion, conservative lawmakers across the country are enacting TRAP laws -- Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers. TRAP laws often require abortion providers to meet absurd and unnecessary medical standards in order to stay open. Unable to keep up with the burden of TRAP laws, a number of abortion providers have been forced to close their doors.

But when news outlets cover TRAP laws, they often uncritically echo anti-abortion activists who claim TRAP laws are necessary to protect patient’s health and safety. Reporters often describe TRAP laws the way anti-choice opponents refer to them, “as safety measures,” without noting that major medical organizations have dismissed these measures as unnecessary and thinly veiled efforts to limit abortion access.

That kind of shoddy reporting of TRAP laws contributes to abortion stigma -- which is the collection of negative tropes and ideas about abortion as being morally wrong, dangerous, or socially unacceptable -- that pervades even mainstream news coverage.

Legal abortion is already safe. TRAP laws make it unsafe by burying abortion providers under mountains of unnecessary regulations, putting access to legal abortion out of reach and forcing people to seek out dangerous, self-induced abortions. Any news coverage of TRAP laws that doesn’t make those facts clear to audiences actively contributes to misinformation about abortion safety.