As we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are reminded of his poignant words that a "right delayed is a right denied." This is as true for reproductive rights as it is for other civil and human rights. And nowhere is it more true than with regard to a policy known as the Hyde Amendment, which delays and sometimes entirely denies poor women, especially women of color, access to abortion.
Abortion policy in this country does not treat all women equally. Even before Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, affluent women were usually able to access abortion safely through a network of private doctors or by traveling to other states or countries where it was legal. Meanwhile, poor women risked their health, fertility, and often their lives to end a pregnancy. Unfortunately, because of the Hyde Amendment, similar inequalities exist today -- nearly 40 years after the Supreme Court declared that all women have a constitutional right to abortion.
The Hyde Amendment prohibits Medicaid, the joint federal-state health care program for the indigent, from covering abortion care in almost all circumstances. Most people think of this as a "woman's issue," which of course it is. But the Hyde Amendment intentionally discriminates against poor women and has a disparate impact on women of color. In this way, the Hyde Amendment is a civil rights issue as well.
The Hyde Amendment is especially harmful to women of color. According to the most recent Census data, 25.8 percent of African Americans and 25.3 percent of Hispanics are poor, compared to 12.3 percent of whites and 12.5 percent of Asians. As a result, women of color are more likely to rely on government health programs. And due to socioeconomic factors, women of color disproportionately experience a range of reproductive and other health disparities, including higher rates of infant mortality, HIV/AIDS, STIs, unintended pregnancy, and abortion.
The upshot: women of color are more likely to be directly affected by the Hyde Amendment and other abortion funding restrictions.
We do not subject other fundamental constitutional freedoms -- voting, free speech, freedom to worship, the right to a fair trial, the right to counsel -- to poll taxes or income requirements. But a woman's ability to act on her constitutionally protected decision to have an abortion is subject to the whims of a fickle legislature and what is (or is not) in her pocketbook.
It is poor women, disproportionately women of color, who have to scrape together money for an abortion -- foregoing rent or utilities, pawning dear items, taking food out of their children's mouths, or worse. It is these women who consider suicide or self-harm, risk inducing an abortion on their own, or continue a pregnancy against their will and better judgment because they cannot find the money or get to a clinic in time. And it is these women whom policymakers continually ignore but who must live with the consequences of political fights over which they have little control.
Ironically, abortion opponents have recently tried to claim the mantle as defenders of civil rights, launching a pernicious campaign aimed at driving a wedge in the African American community over abortion. Citing high rates of abortion among black women, they claim that "abortion is genocide" and argue that abortion providers intentionally target black women for discriminatory reasons.
This strategy cynically plays on an understandable distrust of the medical establishment among many people of color due to a history of eugenics in this country. But it completely ignores the structural racism and economic inequality that create health disparities for women of color across the board. It also treats women of color as pawns in the alleged self-destruction of themselves and their own community rather than as agents of their own self-determination.
Where is the outrage of abortion opponents that the infant mortality rate is twice as high for blacks as for whites? Where is their indignation that three-fourths of HIV cases in Washington, D.C. are among African Americans?
The reality about abortion and women of color is that our government has taken a group of women who have little access to health care generally, a heightened incidence of disease and injury, and an increased risk of unintended pregnancy, and then walled off abortion care. This leaves these women in the horrible position of not having the institutional supports necessary to plan wanted pregnancies, carry healthy pregnancies to term, and raise their children with dignity, yet unable to end pregnancies that they do not want or feel unprepared to handle.
As long as these unjust provisions remain a part of our laws, the rights of women in this country will continue to be treated according to two different standards: whether you can afford to pay for your rights or not. That is not equality.
The Hyde Amendment has been in place for almost 35 years. We have long since passed from delayed justice to outright denial. Repealing the Hyde Amendment will not, by itself, ensure full equality for women of color and low-income women, but it is a necessary precondition. Ending abortion funding restrictions will improve the lives of all women, but none more so than the women who have already shouldered much more than their fair share of injustice.
This piece was co-authored by Shira Saperstein, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and deputy director of the Moriah Fund.
The full report on which this column is based, "Separate and Unequal: The Hyde Amendment and Women of Color," can be found at: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/12/hyde_amendment.html.
Victoria Moran: Abortion and Reverence for Life: Grappling with My Father's 'Other Job'
Yeah, because those are actual rights...enumerated in the Constitution. Here we go. 6 mo. ago the Hyde amendment was the justification to convince people to support nationalized healthcare. Now we must repeal the Hyde amendment so that we can force those who find abortion a mortal sin to fund it through their tax dollars. Nice.
I am asked to fund "freedom fighters" from blackwater et al - who murder and rape wholesale. My tax dollars fund research from Monsanto and their ilk, creating seeds that destroy people's ability to feed themselves. My tax dollars go into so called "foreign aid" - which is usually nothing more than a non-bid contract to companies like Bechtel whose agenda is the privatization of essential services needed by people to live.
I am not a big fan of abortion, truth be told. But when you cut welfare, public services, access to health care, banning abortion for poor people seems to be particularly moralistic and punitive.
Are you kidding? The government does not have to pay to provide a basis for anyone to exercise most constitutional rights (voting and having a lawyer in a criminal case being notable exceptions, for obvious reasons: both of them take place through interface with the government itself.).
It is one thing to argue you have a right to an abortion, another to argue that taxpayers must pay for it.
You have the right to vote. If you have to pay $1,000,000 each time you vote, you still have the right to vote, but not the means.
Health care is a human right in almost every country except America. Abortion is a health care issue, even if it goes against your particular brand of religious idiocy. So every woman, not just the rich, should be entitled to free and safe abortions.
Pretty sure that settles it.
Right. So, requiring people to pay for their health care, or particular procedures, like abortion, does not violate their Constitutional rights.
There is a huge difference between having the right to abortion and obligating the taxpayer to pay for abortion.
Unwanted pregnancy is nearly 100% avoidable. Simply use birth control all the time.
If you cannot afford birth control or to deal with the possible consequences of sex, including being able to provide all the necessities a child needs 100% on your own until that child is an adult, without taxpayer assistance, then you cannot afford to have sex. Period.
Wow. Your holier-than-thou attitude is a perfect example of what is wrong in America today. Why should you decide who can have sex?
I think people like you should have to pay to vote. $1,000,000 dollars. You still have the right to vote. Can you afford it?
People like you are the reason I left the US.
I never impregnated anyone else. I have been in the workforce full time since age 18.
Never received a penny of public assistance. Always supported my family. Own two homes.
Put myself through college. Never been in jail. And I have paid well in excess of $1 Million dollars in taxes in my lifetime.
Yeah, I must be the root of all of America's problems.
If all Americans were like me, we'd be in real trouble.
FWIW, my point is that people MUST accept personal responsibility for their actions and inactions. Those that do not are the problem.
I hope you enjoy where you live now.
That's what I want.
You young women of child-bearing age, you'd better wake up to the real peril you've put yourselves into, if you helped elect the current Congress.
All women who've ever taken advantage of your ability to have a safe, legal abortion, shame on you if you voted for Republican and/or anti-choice candidates.
Shame on all pro-choice women for allowing the so-called leaders of choice to get us into the pickle we find ourselves in today.
Ladies, we're in trouble.
Other than that, great ideas.
In the late '90s I worked at a pharmacy. Then, a prescription for oral contraceptives carried no co-payment for Medicaid patients. I don't know whether that is still true today, but the people who insist on keeping the Hyde amendment in place have to ask themselves what they want. Cry about welfare queens having babies to get fatter checks. Bellyache about people being dependent on the government for everything, but if you want to prevent that, you'd better be willing to pony up something to help alleviate the problem.