Women Are Trying to Survive COVID-19. Politicians Are Trying to Take Away Their Care
Now is the time to be making abortion more accessible, not less
April 10, 2020
By Alexis McGill Johnson
Women are trying to survive this. Moms laid off or missing wages to stay home with their children, still trying to make ends meet. Women in abusive relationships, weathering shelter in place orders. Women hiding in their closets, trying to get through one more conference call between homeschooling and tantrums. Health care workers, the majority of whom are women, going to work on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Low-wage workers deemed essential, some leaving their children at home, continuing to put themselves at risk so that the rest of us have what we need to survive.
We are doing the majority of child care, as schools and daycares close. If our families get sick, we will do the majority of caregiving. And as always happens, Black and Latino communities will face the harshest economic consequences, so women of color will face difficult decisions about how to support their families.