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Beyond Roe: We must move from a pro-choice to a pro-abortion framework

Bans off our bodies


NOTE: Abortion is still legal in the United States as of May 2022. The leaked opinion is NOT a final ruling, and sources that claim otherwise are misinformation. If you have an appointment to receive an abortion, you can still receive care. 


Last week, an exclusive Politico story leaked an initial draft majority opinion indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision protecting the right to abortion. In the wake of this news, protesters rallied across the country. Upon the overturning, abortion would be banned in 23 states, including in cases of rape or incest. The Guttmacher Institute has found that 1 in 4 women will have an abortion during their childbearing years. Roughly half of them are below the poverty line. “This would impact everyone, but obviously the burden is going to fall most heavily on low-income people, people in rural communities, people of colour, LGBTQ people… there are a whole host of communities who are going to be additionally burdened because of their inequitable access to healthcare,” Juli Adhikari, policy and advocacy manager for the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress told South Asian Today. The idea that people can simply travel to another state to get abortions falls flat when considering the financial resources needed to travel or take time off work. 


This assault on people’s bodily autonomy in the name of religious freedom has been a concentrated project by the Christian Right in the United States for decades, one that is bigger than and precedes Trump’s presidency -- even though a majority of Americans actually support Roe. “There’s been a concentrated attack on abortion access through the judiciary, legislative attacks, and state abortion restrictions -- over 1300 restrictions have been enacted in the United States,” Juli said. “Various anti-abortion politicians and policymakers have found different ways to really undermine that access.” As Juli noted, Texas SB8, a six-week abortion ban, was one of the most egregious examples of this.

 

Juli Adhikari | Supplied


Countless people, who already face systemic barriers to receiving healthcare in other ways, have lived in a post-Roe world for decades, with the window of access shrinking further. Payal Kumar, an LGBTQ reproductive health and abortion access worker, described some of these hurdles: “I’ve seen a single clinic serving an entire state, mandatory waiting periods, TRAP laws, and unnecessary testing that can prolong the process for weeks until someone can no longer be seen in [their] state. Clinics had closed when they failed to meet arbitrary requirements like the width of their doorways.” Patients Payal works with often lack transportation to get to abortion clinics and also face language access issues and a whole host of other barriers. “There are so many factors affecting access and affordability that stopping our fight at Roe would maintain a status quo where millions of people (primarily low-income and working-class) are forced to carry unwanted or nonviable pregnancies to term.”


Given the disastrous implications of this ruling, here are three ways that communities can mobilise to protect the rights to abortion and bodily autonomy.


Support mutual aid funds for individuals seeking abortions and reproductive health workers


Payal noted that clinics in states that will still allow abortions if Roe is overturned are projected to get thousands of out-of-state patients. “More people will need mutual aid funds and other practical support to get to a clinic or to receive medication abortions that are not as reliant on brick-and-mortar clinics,” they said. Rather than sending money to large nonprofit organisations such as Planned Parenthood, consider supporting local abortion funds and grassroots groups focusing on underserved populations, such as Indigenous Women Rising


Payal also spoke of the challenges workers face in the reproductive health space, who have been battling harassment and right-wing protesters. “I’m seeing my coworkers struggling to see a higher volume of patients with limited resources and dealing with challenges to their mental wellbeing,” they said. “Even in ‘liberal’ states, we’re still seeing shootings happen at abortion clinics and really reactionary hate mail being sent out to workers.” Organising locally and getting in touch with folks doing reproductive justice work in each community can help these workers garner the support they need to sustain their efforts. This illustrates the overlap between reproductive justice and labour rights. Many of the workers in this space, who may be people of colour, queer, non-binary, or trans, face real threats to their physical and emotional safety.


Move from a pro-choice to a pro-abortion framework


Perhaps the most genius marketing move of the right-wing is adopting the term “pro-life.” For a party that puts the rights of fetuses over the lives of people with uteruses and has blocked universal healthcare, childcare, and financial support for people who need it most, the term is laden with irony. The “pro-choice” movement has thus far emphasised the importance of the individual right to choose and often mentions people who have experienced real emotional trauma in making that choice. However, in many ways, this view still stigmatises abortion. Many people who seek abortions do not have difficulty making the decision, and it must be as much of an equal right for them as it is for anybody else. 


Viewing abortion as integral to survivor rights and disability rights is essential, but framing it as an individual decision alone fails to account for the societal responsibility to provide this healthcare service to everyone equitably. As Payal explained, “Roe v. Wade was really decided at a time when the neoliberal obsession of privatisation of public services was taking off.” They noted that Roe’s protections were limited to people’s ability to pay, and the Hyde Amendment passed right after Roe, which prohibited federal funds from being used for abortions, further perpetuated the notion that abortion is not real healthcare. To suggest that abortion is only okay in cases of rape, incest, or ectopic pregnancy remains an egregious violation of bodily autonomy. We must fight for the survivor who was sexually assaulted and impregnated just as we fight for the person who got pregnant due to consensual sex.

 

Payal Kumar | Supplied


This reframing can also be helpful in the South Asian context since reproductive health can be taboo in many of our communities, although the specific cultural implications of abortion can vary. “There’s an unwillingness to talk about reproductive care in South Asian communities,” Juli, who is Nepali, said. “[However], legally, Nepal has one of the least restrictions on abortion access -- abortion is just a part of healthcare.” These varying legal landscapes in our countries of origin offer entry points for discussions with elders in our communities about what’s at stake. Juli also commented on the importance of rejecting the model minority myth and more closely examining the disparities in the AAPI community. “Nepali women make as little as 52 cents on the dollar and have some of the highest poverty rates in the United States,” Juli said. Many members of South Asian communities grapple with limited access to healthcare services writ large, another entry point for conversations about reproductive care. Compounded by deeply rooted cultural stigma and sometimes language barriers, developing culturally sensitive language around abortion and rooting it as a critical healthcare service is key.


Mobilise intersectional coalitions and reject white feminist approaches to the issue

Voting is important but has severe structural limitations in addition to the question of voter suppression. Payal noted that the Senate, which is currently a Democratic majority, voted against the Women’s Health Protection Act which aimed to codify Roe a couple of months ago. “Both capitalist parties are unwilling to offer any resistance to escalating attacks on the working class and are often the ones perpetuating them,” Payal said. “They want to keep getting the endorsement of big health nonprofits and organisations without doing anything meaningful, using our lives as bargaining chips for elections.” This explains why Democrats, who have a trifecta at the moment, have failed to codify Roe. Juli noted Roe’s broader implications: “What happens with Roe could have huge implications for marriage equality, access to contraception, interracial marriage -- all of our rights are at stake, and this is the time for us to be involved.” 


It is crucial to note who has been at the often invisible forefront of abortion rights-related labour. “Before the protections of Roe, there were so many underground networks of people- folks who were BIPOC, queer, disabled, low-income- who were doing the work to make sure we were taking care of each other,” Payal said. “After Roe passed, so many of these same communities of people continue to do this care work because of the access issues we’ve seen. Trans, non-binary, and gender-expansive folks have been connecting the dots between abortion access and Hormone Replacement Therapy access but are often left out of the conversation despite having dire health outcomes from a lack of inclusive and accessible healthcare.” 


‘Pussy-hat’ white feminism, which is limited in scope and exclusionary to trans people, is both ignorant and strategically limiting. Focusing on material solidarity means honing in on the many material barriers that have existed prior to this ruling and will only be exacerbated after poverty, immigration status, language barriers, cultural stigma, and more. 


What lies ahead


The future of Roe has global implications. Yatha Jain, a South Asian gender and multicultural advocate based in Australia, spoke to South Asian Today about her perspective. “Australia tends to follow suit with what happens in the UK and the US, which alone is worrying,” she said. “This has given more momentum to the anti-abortion movement in Australia.” Yatha described how, just ahead of elections, Australia’s Assistant Minister of Women spoke at an anti-abortion rally and has garnered increased coverage and support from other politicians. Yatha noted the disproportionate effects that anti-abortion policies have on South Asian immigrants: “Many people may not have accumulated wealth and may not fit into those high wealth brackets…. It’s a big gap in our health and the mental healthcare system.”

 

Yatha Jain | Supplied


Abortion is a people’s issue. It is not a moral issue but an issue of a fundamental healthcare right that is inextricable for the rights to economic security, sexual freedom, and racial equality. The anti-abortion wing knows full well that abortions will not be prevented by overturning Roe -- only safe abortions will. Forcing the most marginalised in society to seek unsafe abortions as their only alternative will cause the deaths and suffering of countless people. This vicious attack on such a fundamental right -- the right to have agency over our own bodies -- requires us to mobilise across lines of race and class to resist the onslaught that is to come. 

About the author

Ria Mazumdar is South Asian Today's US political analyst. A Bengali-American, she is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico. A recent graduate of Tufts University, her interests include politics, economic development, and postcolonial thought. Ria is currently working as a Research Associate in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Instagram: @ria.maz  / Tweets: @riamaz

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