That law is the one now before the Supreme Court in a direct challenge to Roe v Wade. They know that, but they don't care."īut Andy Gipson, a former member of the Mississippi Legislature who is now the state's agriculture and commerce commissioner, said race had nothing to do with passage of Mississippi's law against abortion after the 15th week. Regardless of what legislators say, Torres insisted, the intent is to target women of colour, to control their bodies: "They know who these restrictions are going to affect. Where she lives, near the US-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley, women are forced to travel to obtain abortions and must pass in-state border patrol checkpoints where they have to disclose their citizenship status, she said. She also cited the 2021 Texas law that bans abortion after around six weeks of pregnancy.
She pointed to the Hyde Amendment, a 1980 law that prevents the use of federal funds to pay for abortions except in rare cases. Torres said historically, anti-abortion laws have been crafted in ways that hurt low-income women. When they don't, things like this happen." "People are going to have to put the people in place to make the decisions that align with their values. "People are going to have to vote," said Furdge, 34, who is happily raising her now 7-year-old son but continues to advocate for women having the right to choose. Most people who aren't affected don't consider the stakes. She's not surprised by the latest news on the Supreme Court's likely decision. By the time she found the abortion clinic, she was too far along to have the procedure. Misled by advertising, she first went to a crisis pregnancy centre that tried to talk her out of an abortion. But now she was in Mississippi, having moved home to escape an abusive relationship. Getting access to an abortion provider there was no problem, Furdge said. She said she didn't know how she could afford another child. She was a single, unemployed college student already raising one baby in 2014 when she found out she was pregnant with another. "We're talking about folks who are already marginalized," Roberts said.Īmanda Furdge, who is Black, was one of those women. If abortions are outlawed, those same women - often poor - will likely have the hardest time travelling to distant parts of the country to terminate pregnancies or raising children they might struggle to afford, said Roberts, who is Black and once volunteered at Mississippi's only abortion clinic. Schools often have ineffective or inadequate sex education. Why the great disparities? Laurie Bertram Roberts, executive director of the Alabama-based Yellowhammer Fund, which provides financial support for women seeking abortion, said women of colour in states with restrictive abortion laws often have limited access to health care and a lack of choices for effective birth control. people who are trying to make ends meet." "They directly impact people of colour, Black, brown, Indigenous people. "Abortion restrictions are racist," said Cathy Torres, an organizing manager with Frontera Fund, a Texas organization that helps women pay for abortions. In Louisiana, minorities represent 42 per cent of the population, according to the state Health Department, and about 72 per cent of those receiving abortions. The numbers in Alabama are 35 per cent and 69 per cent. In Texas, they're 59 per cent of the population and 74 per cent of those receiving abortions.
In Mississippi, people of colour comprise 44 per cent of the population but 81 per cent of women receiving abortions, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks health statistics. When it comes to the effect on minority women, the numbers are unambiguous. Roughly half, largely in the South and Midwest, are likely to quickly ban abortion. Overturning the Roe v Wade decision would give states authority to decide abortion's legality. The draft decision is not yet final but it sent shockwaves through the country. The potential impact on minority women became all the more clear on Monday with the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion suggesting the court's conservative majority is poised to overturn the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion. If you are Black or Hispanic in a conservative state that already limits access to abortions, you are far more likely than a white woman to have one.Īnd if the US Supreme Court allows states to further restrict or even ban abortions, minority women will bear the brunt of it, according to statistics analyzed by The Associated Press.