Could abortion clinics open on Indian reservations to provide services not allowed in the state the reservation is in?
<p>States have laws against gambling yet reservations can have casinos.  Would abortion clinics be possible if the state they are in blocks abortion?</p>
<p>I'm not asking if reservations would have to allow it or even want to allow it,  I'm asking only about the legality of them allowing it.</p>

<p>The general rule is that the state has jurisdiction over (state) crimes committed on the reservation only when victim and perpetrator are non-Indian. However, in <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-67/pdf/STATUTE-67-Pg588.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;PL-280 jurisdictions&quot;</a>, the state and tribe have jurisdiction in case the perpetrator is Indian, and the state otherwise has jurisdiction. Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Wisconsin are the relevant states, and this complexity depends on the specific tribe, see <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1162" rel="nofollow noreferrer">18 USC 1162</a>. The jurisdiction division applies to crimes committed in &quot;Indian country&quot;, which is defined in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1151" rel="nofollow noreferrer">18 USC 1151</a>. An Indian (Native American) physician performing an abortion could therefore be safe from prosecution for performing an abortion (as long as there is no federal or tribal prohibition – the Oglala Sioux banned abortion, in response to an earlier proposal to open an abortion clinic). I don't know of a state with a law criminalizing <em>getting</em> an abortion (where there is only a perpetrator), but if there were such a law in a non-PL280 jurisdiction, only Indian women could get an abortion free of the threat of state prosecution. There can also be tribe-specific exceptions, though specific treaty provisions, as discussed <a href="https://www.cga.ct.gov/gae/related/20090518_State%20Tribal%20Resouce%20Guide/State%20Jurisdiction%20Through%20Federal%20Authorization.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>.</p>
<p>A non-trivial impediment to abortions in Indian country is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Amendment" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Hyde Amendment</a> which bans using federal funds to perform an abortion – relevant given the realities of medical care in reservations.</p>

abortion