How Abortion Affects Minority Rights

By: Nitya Kattamuri

1. The ban on abortion creates an unfair disadvantage for racial minorities, specifically Blacks and Hispanics, according to the CDC

    • Many activists that support Black and/or Hispanic communities, etc., fear the socioeconomic effects those minorities would face from the ban on abortion, since this decision essentially is an economic and health justice issue. “‘This is not something where it’s either: make a choice to choose to be a parent or not to choose to be a parent,” said Oriaku Njoku, co-founder and executive director of ARC-Southeast, an abortion fund in Georgia that serves six states across the Southeast region. “There’s so many things like access to food, access to a living wage, access to insurance, your race, your gender, your ability to make money for your family’” (abcnews.go.com).
    • This source continues to bring up very important points mentioning, in that  “racial and ethnic minorities often receive lower-quality health care than white people.” “‘This fight for abortion access that we’re in right now is a fight against white supremacy in this country,” said Monica Raye Simpson, the executive director of the Southern-based reproductive justice group SisterSong…”When we live in a world in a country where access to health care is already extremely limited to people of color … that is a problem,’ said Simpson.”
    • “Black women had the highest rate of abortions with 23.8 abortions per 1,000 women…Hispanic women had 11.7 abortions per 1,000 women, according to the CDC. White women had the lowest rate: 6.6 abortions per 1,000 women. The majority of these women — 56.9% — were in their 20s, according to the data.”
    • Summarization: Black and Hispanic minorities, and other racial and ethnic minorities receive lower-ended, improper health care treatment in comparison to white people, as sources state. Living in America and dealing with such a challenge is one thing in itself, but this ban is another. Looking back at the data, Black women, especially, had the most abortions compared to other racial minorities. With this ban in place, they would likely have had to deal with mild to severe pregnancy complications, that too, under lower-quality health care. This ban would hit much harder on these racial minorities, considering the difference in the lives they would have had pre-ban and post-ban with and without abortions being allowed. Pre-ban, even under improper health care, they could at least live a life they would have wanted, not dealing with pregnancy complications and being able to focus on their life goals, thriving socioeconomically. Whereas, having this ban on abortion and undergoing a forced pregnancy would only bring about pregnancy complications to be dealt with low-quality health care, difficulty in managing jobs, etc.
    • Link-https://abcnews.go.com/Health/abortion-restrictions-disproportionately-impact-people-color/story?id=84467809



2. The ban on abortion creates a high risk for other laws protecting minorities like same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, etc. (aka as a result of this case being reversed, there is a high chance for the other listed laws to be repealed)