Welcome to The Week in Reproductive Justice, a weekly recap of all news related to the hot-button issue of what lawmakers are allowing women to do with their bodies!
On Wednesday, alongside several leading Democratic presidential candidates, Elizabeth Warren spoke at the She the People conference, one of the first presidential events to centralize the experiences and conditions of women of color.
Among many other important issues, Warren spoke about the disproportionately high rates of maternal death for black women, who are 243 percent more likely than their white counterparts to die of pregnancy or birth-related causes, in a country that already maintains the highest maternal death rates in the industrialized world. As of 2015, the last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data, there are 26.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in the U.S., but that number climbs to 44 for black women.
But, as she does for just about everything at this point, Warren has a plan to address this. Speaking at the conference, Warren announced she would take away funding from hospitals that failed to adequately address these disparate rates, and offer “bonus” funding to medical providers that successfully lower black maternal death rates.
“I want to see the hospitals see it as their responsibility to address this problem head-on and make it a first priority,” Warren said, to loud applause from the audience of predominantly women of color. “The best way to do that is to use money to make it happen, because we gotta have change and we gotta have change now.”
Warren’s plan is preceded by previous efforts in the Senate by fellow Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, who introduced legislation to research and address disproportionately high rates of maternal death among women of color. Just a few weeks ago, in the House of Representatives, Reps. Lauren Underwood and Alma Adams formally launched the Black Maternal Health Caucus.
Research has, time and again, traced higher black maternal death rates to racial bias in health care, even across economic lines, such that black women are less likely to be trusted when they say they’re in pain, or ask for help. This is because of ongoing, dehumanizing stereotyping of black women, which asserts that black women don’t feel or experience pain the same way white women do. All of this can be traced to the inherent racism that shapes who society privileges with credibility to speak about their experiences, and recognition as human beings.
The Trump administration’s dangerous gag rule has been temporarily halted
Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, there has been steady and justified fear that the administration would slash Title X funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood, which offer abortion care, among other reproductive health services. The majority of women on Medicaid who rely on Title X funding to access reproductive health care, including preventative care like contraception, come from communities of color, making the proposed funding cuts simultaneously sexist, classist, and racist.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced it would formally enact a new domestic gag rule policy, leading to dozens of lawsuits from states like California, New York, Oregon, and others, and this week, a U.S. District Court judge instated an injunction on the policy that will prevent it from taking effect nationwide. This ruling follows a similar one from a federal judge in Oregon days earlier.
The injunction, of course, is temporary until a formal ruling is made, but considering how rapidly we’re approaching May 3, the date the gag rule would formally take effect, it couldn’t have come at a better time.
Contrary to the gag rule’s claims of protecting taxpayers from the supposed agony of unwillingly paying for abortion care, federal law—and cruel, senseless federal law, at that—already precludes federal taxpayer dollars from covering elective abortions. This, of course, is “pro-life” hypocrisy at its finest, as politicians and individuals unbothered by taxpayer funding of war and militarism pretend to be morally offended by taxpayer funding of health care (which, by the way, abortion absolutely is.)
Women—and the one in four women who have abortions—are notably taxpayers, who, like men, should have the full range of health care they may need covered by their taxes.
At any rate, if the Trump administration’s goal truly is to prevent abortion, defunding the organizations and clinics that offer resources that reduce unwanted pregnancy rates—and de facto reduce abortion rates—isn’t exactly the most logical approach. In a similar vein, abortion rates remain relatively the same when access to abortion care is more restricted, with rates simply increasing for unsafe abortions.
But the goal of the Trump administration and the broader, anti-abortion movement with which it conspires, isn’t about combating unwanted pregnancy, or logic, or anything, really, except abject cruelty and the punishment and control of women. And it’s difficult to bargain, let alone reason, with people who clearly don’t even recognize women as fully human.
Elizabeth Warren unveils a plan to address high maternal death rates among Black women
Surprise, surprise: More states pass dangerous abortion bans
In what’s become horrifyingly routine at this point in 2019, this week, state legislatures in South Carolina, Indiana, and Louisiana all advanced their own dangerous abortion bans.
South Carolina
In South Carolina, the state House overwhelmingly passed yet another “fetal heartbeat” bill, which bans abortion before most women can even know they’re pregnant. Fetal heartbeat bans, which ban abortion at or after about six weeks, have swept the nation since last year, seeming to pass out of a new state legislature practically each week. In effect, these bills are bans on all abortions, with the potential to devastate maternal health outcomes, as time and again, states with more restrictions on abortion maintain disproportionately high maternal death rates.
Indiana
In Indiana, the state legislature banned the safest and most common form of second trimester abortion, effectively banning it altogether, with few exceptions. It always seems worth repeating that, because later abortion is exceptionally rare, with more than 90 percent of abortions taking place in the first trimester, rhetorical and legislative attacks on later abortion are all about stigmatizing and demonizing all abortion. Later abortion, however often or not often it happens, must always be a shame-free and safe option.
Within days of the ban’s passage through the legislature, and anti-choice Gov. Eric Holcomb’s desk, the ACLU has already filed a lawsuit to block the blatantly unconstitutional ban. While bans on second-trimester abortions have passed out of state legislatures at alarming rates in recent years, they constantly face defeat in the courts, where Roe v. Wade explicitly protects later abortion.
Louisiana
Finally, Louisiana state House lawmakers this week passed an amendment to update the state Constitution, and state explicitly that there is no right to abortion, or public funding for abortion. The bill now moves to the Senate, and if it passes out of the state legislature, it will make it to the ballot for a vote on Nov. 16 this year.
This proposal comes after the 2018 midterms saw two states (West Virginia and Alabama) vote on and ultimately pass virtually identical ballot measures. It’s especially dangerous with Roe v. Wade hanging by a thread at the Supreme Court, and the Court’s 5-4, abortion-hostile composition. Across the country, more than 20 states have “trigger laws” on the books that would immediately criminalize, ban, or severely restrict abortion the moment Roe falls, paving the way for a not at all unlikely, alarmingly dangerous future for women and pregnant people’s human rights.
All in all, it can’t be repeated enough: Abortion bans are void of any practical function save cruelty. At best, they further stigmatize abortion and inconvenience women who will go on to have their abortion anyway, and at worst, they literally kill women.
Tune in next week to see what lawmakers will try next in their never-ending mission to derail reproductive justice!
(image: Zach Gibson/Getty Images)
Kylie Cheung writes about feminism and politics, with a focus on reproductive justice. Follow her on Twitter @kylietcheung, or learn more about her writing at www.kyliecheung.tumblr.com.
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