The impact of limiting abortion rights on Black Americans

13 June 2024

Jun 14, 2024

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Nearly 7 million of the country’s 11.8 million black women of reproductive age live in states that have or or planning to implement abortion restrictions, according to a new report from a pair of reproductive rights organizations. See also here.

In addition, while the national pregnancy-related death toll is decreasing, Black Americans still die from childbirth at higher rates than other races. States with the most extreme abortion restrictions often have the highest Black maternal mortality rates.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Wikipedia - note that this is for all women, not just Black women

An analysis released Wednesday by the National Partnership for Women & Families and In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda examined the Black female population of each state.
Today, 14 states ban most abortions and have a combined 3,108,900 Black women residents. In the three states with six-week bans — Florida, Georgia and South Carolina — there are 2,258,700 more Black women of reproductive age, according to the report. All in all, there are roughly 5.4 million Black women in the 17 states with the most restrictive abortion laws.
Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, said in a statement that “it is no mere coincidence that abortion bans and restrictions have only exacerbated the Black maternal health crisis.”
While the national pregnancy-related death toll is decreasing, Black Americans still die from childbirth at higher rates than other races. In 2022, the maternal mortality death rate was 49.5 deaths per 100,000 live births for Black women, 19 for white women, 16.9 for Hispanic women and 13.2 for Asian women, according to federal data.
“Many of the states with the most extreme abortion restrictions are also states with some of the highest Black maternal mortality rates in the nation,” Frye said. Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama all prohibit most abortions and had the highest maternal death tolls from 2018 to 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Contributing factors include poor access to both medical care and paid leave, and discriminatory healthcare practices, according to a summary. “These same barriers undermine access to abortion care, and have only been exacerbated by abortion bans,” the analysts wrote.
For some, the combination of the maternal mortality crisis and abortion bans may affect family planning: 4 in 10 Black women said living in a state that bans abortion made them consider their own risk of death if they become pregnant, according to a poll from In Our Own Voice conducted in January.
And 36% of Black women polled living in states that restrict abortions at 15 weeks or less said they’ve thought about the risk of facing arrest for something related to abortion, pregnancy or miscarriage.
“The loss of abortion rights is deeply personal for Black women, who are facing increasingly difficult decisions about pregnancy and having children due to the risks that abortion bans pose to their well-being,” said Regina Davis Moss, In Our Own Voice’s president and CEO.

My suggestions to everyone, including Black Americans:

Stay informed on these issues, particularly if you live in a state that limits abortion rights or in a GOP controlled state, almost all of which are trying to limit abortion rights.
Vote for candidates who support abortion rights and sound healthcare policies for black Americans. Today, that means voting for Joe Biden for President and Democrats at the federal, state and local levels. Almost all Republicans have or will vote to deny abortion rights and many now are working to limit access to abortion pills, hormonal birth control and IUDs. Republicans are obsessed with tax cuts for the superwealthy and denying adequate healthcare and other services to the middle class, both to pay for the tax cuts and because they believe that the government should not support the middle and lower economic classes.
Although voting is necessary to protect our rights, we should also be more politically active.
Consider moving to Michigan or another blue state that protects the healthcare rights of all women.
Life is about tradeoffs - we must make the best choices we can at the time. If you care about reproductive rights, maintaining democracy or avoiding dictatorship, you should vote for Joe Biden and the Democrats. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like all of their policies. If you don’t vote for Biden and the Democrats, you may feel that “you showed them”, but things will be much worse for you and almost everyone else (except the superwealthy), and it will be your fault, in part.
If Trump is elected, he will be America’s Hitler who will create a nationwide abortion ban and will try to ban hormonal birth control and IUDs. Nobody will be able to stop him. The Courts will be ineffective because judges will be too afraid to counter the dictator who threatens to kill them. It will be too late to become politically active because your vote will not matter to a dictator who controls the electoral system. Criticizing the government will be dangerous because Trump and his supporters have vowed to target their political opponents. This next election, if Trump is elected, will doom the United States for decades. What, if anything, are you doing to prevent that from happening?

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