“Complete Liberation”: A Black Reproductive Justice Agenda

Isaiah Thompson
November 16, 2023

“Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people are dynamic leaders in every part of this country.” In a time when reproductive rights are under threat and being actively eroded in the United States—and when

Black people simultaneously face a landscape of unequal and inequitable access to healthcare—what does an agenda centered around Black reproductive justice look like?
A new report from In Our Own Voice, the 2023 National Black Reproductive Justice Policy Agenda, seeks to answer that question.

Continued: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/liberation-black-reproductive-justice-agenda/


Georgia Supreme Court Allows Six-Week Abortion Ban to Remain in Effect as Legal Challenge Continues

October 24, 2023
ACLU
Case: SisterSong v. State of Georgia / Affiliate: ACLU of Georgia

ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court issued a ruling today that allows H.B. 481, a ban on abortion after approximately six weeks of pregnancy, to remain in effect. The court’s majority opinion disregards long-standing precedent that a law violating either the state or federal Constitution at the time of its enactment is void from the start under the Georgia Constitution. Georgia’s ban was blatantly unconstitutional when enacted in 2019 against the backdrop of Roe v. Wade and almost five decades of federal precedent, and therefore unenforceable, as the trial court found. But today’s ruling reversing the lower court’s decision concludes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe last year effectively erased that history.

Continued: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/georgia-supreme-court-allows-six-week-abortion-ban-to-remain-in-effect-as-legal-challenge-continues


Beyond Roe: Abortion Rights, Equity, and the Path Forward

October 18, 2023
Giuliana Grossi

In the aftermath of the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, Anita Allen, PhD, highlights the challenges to abortion rights in the United States, emphasizing disparities faced by marginalized communities, outlining threats to reproductive health care, and calling for collective action and advocacy to defend constitutional privacy and uphold the dignity of all individuals.

“A whopping 60 countries have liberalized their abortion laws over the last 30 years, whereas the United States is one of only 4 countries that have taken a giant step backward becoming more restrictive,” Anita L. Allen, PhD, of University of Pennsylvania, said…  during the President's Guest Plenary Lecture, “From Privacy to Prohibition: Giant Steps in the Wrong Direction” at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) 2023 Scientific Congress & Expo in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Continued: https://www.ajmc.com/view/beyond-roe-abortion-rights-equity-path-forward


One year without Roe: Data shows how abortion access has changed in America

Fewer women are getting abortions, and those without resources are increasingly the least likely to have them.

June 22, 2023
By Jasmine Cui, Chloe Atkins and Sarah Kaufman

The day Mayron Hollis discovered she was pregnant in spring 2022 was the same day doctors gave her terrible news: The pregnancy could be fatal to both her and her fetus.

Hollis had given birth to another child earlier in the year through cesarean section, and doctors were concerned she would experience a cesarean scar pregnancy — a rare type of ectopic pregnancy in which a fertilized egg implants and develops in the cesarean scar. It can cause fatal internal bleeding.

https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/dobbs-abortion-access-data-roe-v-wade-overturned-rcna88947


SUPREME COURT’S ABORTION RULING DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTS BLACK PEOPLE WITH LOW INCOMES IN THE DEEP SOUTH

May 05, 2023
Rhonda Sonnenberg

Even before Alauni took an at-home pregnancy test just four weeks after a single instance of unplanned sexual activity, she knew it would be positive.

The 24-year-old Texas college student – a single, working mother of three children under the age of 6, one of whom is autistic – immediately felt the familiar signs of her pregnancies. She had intended to buy the Plan B “morning after” pill, but was in the process of moving to another city and hadn’t yet secured new housing.

Continued: https://www.splcenter.org/news/2023/05/05/supreme-courts-abortion-ruling-affects-black-people-low-incomes


USA – How anti-abortion laws impact the Black community

With some of the highest maternal death rates in the nation, Black pregnant people face extreme impacts on their health, particularly those in states with restrictive abortion bans.

By Rebekah Sager
April 17, 2023

When the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization last June, overturning Roe v. Wade and ending federal constitutional affirmation of the right to abortion, medical experts and pro-abortion activists working in the Black maternal health community say, they knew the result could be dire.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black pregnant people are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white pregnant people. And Black infants are nearly four times as likely to die during birth as white infants, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health reports.

Continued: https://americanindependent.com/anti-abortion-laws-black-pregnancy-mifepristone-supreme-court-maternal-infant-death-health-care/


Dorothy Roberts on reproductive justice: ‘Abortion isn’t the only focus’

The scholar discusses why the movement needs to bring reproductive justice out of the margins and into the center

Marian Jones
Sun 28 Aug 2022

For many women of color, the right to control one’s reproductive destiny has always been about much more than the right to abortion.

With the recent loss of the constitutional right to abortion in the US, some reproductive rights advocates are calling for a renewed focus on reproductive justice, a concept developed in the early 1990s by women of color. Reproductive justice stresses not just the right to abortion, but also economic, racial and environmental justice, along with other facets of social equality, as critical to true reproductive freedom.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/28/reproductive-freedom-abortion-rights-dorothy-roberts-interview


Abortion ‘desert’ in US south is hurting Black women the most

Ten million Black women in the US face high barriers to abortion access, that will be difficult to overcome for many.

By Taylor Johnson and Kelsey Butler
23 Aug 2022

In the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, an abortion desert has ballooned in the US South, where bans are hitting Black women hardest.

Across the country Black patients have an abortion rate roughly four times that of their White peers, in part due to lower use of contraception that leads to higher rates of unintended pregnancies. In the states that have moved quickly to enact restrictions, Black women make up a far larger proportion of abortion seekers than in places where abortion remains legal.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/23/abortion-desert-in-us-south-is-hurting-black-women-the-most


USA – Black women say they are invisible in abortion rights fight. ‘We are still forgotten within all of this’

By Nicquel Terry Ellis, CNN
Sat July 9, 2022

For many Black women, the reversal of Roe v. Wade last month not only stripped them of bodily autonomy, but created another barrier to economic security and choosing the course of their future.

For 49 years, women have had the right to terminate a pregnancy without needing to justify it, giving some a chance to pursue their educational goals, career aspirations and start families when they were in stable situations.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/09/us/abortion-stories-black-women-reaj/index.html


In abortion debate, echoes of another battle: Reproductive rights for Black women

by Akilah Johnson
June 10, 2022

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Nailah Nicolas stood in the late-afternoon Southern sun at a park dedicated to three enslaved Black women who suffered torturous experiments to advance the field of gynecology.

That day, hanging heavy in the air surrounding the soaring steel monuments to Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey was the Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision in an abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade.

Continued (unblocked): https://wapo.st/3MAxArG
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/10/abortion-reproductive-rights-black-women/