Help Us Fight Back Against Efforts to Roll Back Gender Justice
Extremist judges will not stop endangering the lives of pregnant people or people who may become pregnant—overturning Roe v. Wade, attacking medication abortion, threatening the future of IVF, and this week at SCOTUS, emergency abortion care.
Our lawyers are waging strategic fights that make clear what is at stake for people who can become pregnant and seek to bolster our fundamental rights to control our lives, futures, and destinies.
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One thing that feels clearer than ever through my haze of pandemic-induced rage is that our economy is not set up to allow many women, working families, and people of color to achieve a decent standard of living—meaning that you can afford the basics (food, shelter, health care), access opportunity, and feel economically secure and stable. And by overturning the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs, a majority on the Supreme Court added another structural barrier to economic security. Abortion access is inextricably connected to economic stability—in fact, the decision whether and when to have children is one of the most important economic decisions most people will make.
When people who want an abortion cannot get one, we and our families suffer dire economic consequences. Studies have found that being denied an abortion increases the amount of debt 30 days or more past due by 78%. Being denied an abortion also increases the rate of negative public records, such as bankruptcies and evictions, by 81%. Single women of color, who already own just pennies on the dollar compared to white men, can ill-afford to lose more wealth because of abortion bans.
The economic impact of the inability to access abortion care is especially stark for women raising children on our own: women-headed households face poverty rates that are double the rates for single fathers. We also know that close to 60% of women seeking abortion care already have a child. What’s more, a growing share of women seeking abortion care are poor or have low incomes, and studies show that people who are denied an abortion are nearly four times more likely to live below the poverty line. So those of us who are already struggling to support our families—particularly Black and brown women—will be hit hardest by the economic impact of abortion bans.
Reproductive justice is economic justice. It means that people have what we need to thrive—from the autonomy to make the decision whether and when to have children, to supports and protections ensuring safe and healthy pregnancies, to access to high-quality, affordable child care and paid family and medical leave and safe homes and neighborhoods and adequate nutrition and comprehensive health care (that covers all pregnancy-related care, including birth control, abortion, prenatal and postnatal care), andliving wages. When any of these core supports is threatened, both reproductive justice and economic justice are undermined.
We need #BansOffOurBodies if we want to be able to afford the essentials, access opportunity, and live with economic dignity throughout our lives. To advance economic justice, we need to protect the right to abortion and ensure people have the abortion access they need.