Policy Brief
To: Leroy Comrie
From: Siddharth Shah
Date: July 2nd, 2022,
Re: Federal Law Protecting Access to Abortion, and Reproductive Rights of Women
Statement of Issue: Abortion is a common procedure, 1 in 4 women will have an abortion before the age of 45. However, there is no meaningful access to abortion that is protected on the federal level. In 1973 the United States Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right to abortion. Yet, the constitutional right is under constant attack. In September 2021 Texas passed Texas Heartbeat Act which bans abortion after detection of embryonic or fetal cardiac activity. On June 24th, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, taking away the constitutional right of women to having access to safe abortion, and leaving it up to states, where several states plan to ban abortion. In addition, there is a lack of funding for abortion, and isn’t easily accessible to people of color, leading to often more complicated procedures. Justice Clarence Thomas has hinted the Supreme Court should tackle the issue of contraceptives next, which is severely underfunded, and not easily accessible either.
- Rights to abortion is meaningless for many people. Overwhelming numbers of states are passing anti-abortion laws. People of color, those who struggle financially, young people, and those in rural communities don’t have easy access to abortion.
- Many negative outcomes, and few positive ones. Parental involvement laws make it difficult and delays access to abortion for young people. Also, these laws tend to disproportionately affect young immigrants.
- Cost of abortion. Cost of abortion varies from state to state with some costing zero dollars to up to $3,000 depending on gestation age.
- 22 States have laws that could be used to restrict legal status of abortion. 7 states retain their unenforced pre-Roe abortion laws, 9 states currently have unconstitutional post-Roe restrictions that are blocked by the court but can become enforced now since overturning of Roe vs Wade. Four states have it in their constitution that the state does not protect the right to abortion or public funds can be used for abortion.
Policy Options
- A federal mandate that protects the right of women to have access to abortion. For example, New Jersey passed the Reproductive Freedom Act, a bill that will protect, and expand access to reproductive health, this includes access to abortion, contraceptives, and other related issues to pregnancy. Also, Massachusetts House approved a budget amendment that would protect women’s right to abortion. Ensure public, and private insurance coverage for abortion.
- Advantages: Abortions will become safe, and easily accessible. Women won’t have to travel to other states to get abortions. Also, abortion won’t be costly, and price won’t be determined by gestation age, instead it would cost the same regardless of gestation age.
- Disadvantages: There is no consensus on what gestation age should an abortion be illegal unless medically necessary. There would an increase cost in running abortion programs. Also, how will the federal government decide how much funding for abortion each state gets, should it be based on population, one-set amount for each state, what happens if the federally funding isn’t enough?
- Expand the pool of clinicians that can offer abortion services. With Roe vs Wade being overturned states are planning to see an increase in abortion demand pooling over from other states. Allocate money to fund abortion care training. In certain states abortions can’t take place or are delayed because of admitting privileges requirements, these need to be removed. There also needs to be legal protections for clinicians that perform abortions. Instead of states banning abortion they have laws where a clinician can be fined, jailed, or lose their license for performing an abortion.
- Advantage: A legislation that will allow nurse practitioners, midwives, physician assistant to perform abortions. Will make abortion easily accessible and decrease the wait time to get one. Would also increases access for people of color who have trouble getting abortions.
- Disadvantage: Abortion clinics can still become clogged down with patients from out of state looking for abortions due the expansion of clinicians offering abortion. The other disadvantage is there would need to be a tax increase for training new clinicians to perform abortion or divert funds from elsewhere.
- Currently there are 6 million pregnancies in the United States, and half of them are unintended and four in ten of these are terminated by abortion. Title X program which is a federal program that provides comprehensive family planning has not kept up with inflation. To fix this problem we should increase federally funded public health program for family planning. In addition, these programs can be defunded easily, or policies be paused which was done when Trump was president and had to be rolled back under President Biden. During Trumps presidency it became difficult for women to get access to contraceptives. There should be a federal law that would make it impossible for any president to limit any fund or restrict any policy that make contraceptives accessible.
- Advantage: Decrease in teen pregnancy. Having access to contraceptives reduces the risk of women living in poverty. Expanded education opportunities due to contraceptives as women can delay childbearing. Also, women with early access to birth control experience higher lifetime earnings. By removing barriers to contraceptives, it alleviates the cost of contraceptives, and thus saves taxpayers from unplanned pregnancies.
- Disadvantage: To fund Title X and make it easier for women to have access to contraceptives, there will be an increase in taxes, and funds might need to be redirected from other programs to meet the needs. A federal law that stands where a president can’t make changes, might become a stagnant mandate, and further changes that would benefit women would have to be amended through congress which can take a longtime to pass when the change is immediately needed, and have negative impact on women reproductive rights.
Policy Recommendation: With the overturning of Roe vs Wade, and pre-Roe laws becoming active again like in the state of Texas, and report of a 10-year girl having to travel to Ohio from Indiana for an abortion is already a troubling sign of what is to come when it comes to women reproductive rights. A federal law, that fully legalizes abortion, repeal regulations and laws that restrict abortion for any reasons, prohibit abortion based on gestational limits, and require mandatory waiting periods. Eliminate any parental mandate, and guarantee funding for abortion, and contraceptives.
References:
Sobel Laurie, Salanicoff Alina and Ramaswamy Amrutha, State Actions to Protect and Expand Access to Abortion Services (May,16th 2022) KFF.
Allsbrook, Jamille, Ellmann Nora, (March 17, 2021) A Proactive Abortion Agenda, Federal and State Policies to Protect and Expand Access
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/proactive-abortion-agenda/
Abortion Access, National Institute For Reproductive Health
https://localprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Abortion-Access.pdf
Protect and Ensure Access to Abortion National Women’s Law Center,
https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Abortion_FS_nwlc_LegislativePacketEWFinal.pdf
A Threat to Young People’s Health and Safety, 2019 Advocates For You,
Status of Women In The States
https://statusofwomendata.org/explore-the-data/reproductive-rights/
Abortion Policy in the Absence of Roe (July 1, 2022) Guttmacher Institute,
https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/abortion-policy-absence-roe
The Economic Benefits of Birth Control and Access to Family Planning, (2020), Joint Economic Committee,
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/bb400414-8dee-4e39-abd3-c2460fd30e7d/the-economic-benefits-of-birth-control-and-access-to-family-planning.pdf
