Photograph by Glenna Gordon for CNN.
BY: SOPHIE LOVERING, SUMMER 2020 COLLABORATOR AT POWER IN PLACE
About one quarter of all American women will use abortion services by the age of 45 [1]. Access to safe abortions is a human right; the ability to determine whether and when to have a child has significant implications for the economic, social, and political equality of women [1]. Despite its essential nature, the right to receive an abortion has faced new restrictions in the age of COVID-19.
Many individuals are arguing to end abortion services during the pandemic, but these arguments do not stem from the desire for safety. Rather, they serve as a continuation of the long-standing debate concerning the morality of abortion. According to Reproductive BioMedicine Online, some argue that reproductive healthcare services interfere with hospital resources that should instead be going to COVID-19 patients in critical condition [2]. Others argue that providing reproductive healthcare services is not consistent with social distancing [2]. Both of these arguments are misguided. Most reproductive healthcare occurs in an “ambulatory setting,” and thus does not take away from the care of hospitalized COVID-19 patients [2]. Delaying reproductive healthcare might actually increase the demand for hospital resources, as pregnancies resulting in termination at later stages face significantly higher risks of complications [2]. Additionally, reproductive healthcare settings are taking steps to mitigate the risk of contagion by offering telemedicine, enhanced hygiene protocols, and infection screening prior to appointments [2]. Like all medical environments, practices providing reproductive healthcare are effectively minimizing the risk of infection and ensuring maximum possible social distancing [2]. These truths have not prevented the restriction of abortion access, however. Governors in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma have supported the cessation of both medication and surgical abortion, using a much more insidious argument: that abortion procedures are “elective” or “nonessential” [1].
The restriction of abortion care is always negative, but is particularly dangerous during this pandemic. The classification of abortions as “elective” suggests that women’s equality and autonomy is expendable [1]. It also implicitly questions a woman’s judgement to make decisions concerning her own body. In medicine, an “elective procedure” is one that can be delayed without consequences [1]. Considering the increasing risks associated with delaying abortion, and maximum limits on the gestational age at which an abortion may be performed legally, abortion is in no way “elective,” and classifying it as such will mean that “many women will be unable to obtain an abortion at all” [1]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this might mean that families will face the undue financial burden of an additional child, or that women will face an unplanned pregnancy resulting from intimate partner violence, which has increased as a result of quarantine orders [1].
Restricted access to abortion care is particularly harmful to women of color. Many women of color already experience limited access to abortion [3]. Women of color face income inequality, which means that they are more likely to be covered by Medicaid and in turn impacted by the Hyde Amendment, which bands federal funds for abortion care in Medicaid [3]. Women of color also face explicit racism; anti-choice organizations have targeted Black and Latina women with the false rhetoric that they devalue human life, even in the womb [3]. Restricting abortion access, which is already restricted to women of color, as a result of this pandemic, which also disproportionately impacts people of color, will significantly harm minority American populations.
We cannot sit idly by while women, and especially women of color, watch their rights fade away. Abortion is undeniably an essential healthcare service. Those who argue that the COVID-19 pandemic warrants restricted reproductive healthcare are either misguided or ill-intentioned.
References
[1] Bayefsky, Michelle J., Deborah Bartz, and Katie L. Watson. “Abortion during the Covid-19 Pandemic—Ensuring Access to an Essential Health Service.” New England Journal of Medicine (2020): 382. Doi: 10.1056/NEJMp2008006.
[2] Kushnir, Vitaly A., Banafsheh Kashani, and Eli Y. Adashi. “Reproductive healthcare during a pandemic: a New York state of mind.” Reproductive BioMedicine Online (2020). Doi: 10.1016/j.rbmo.2020.06.005.
[3] Mhatre, Nikita. “Abortion Restrictions Hurt Women of Color.” National Partnership for Women and Families. April 25, 2019. https://www.nationalpartnership.org/our-impact/blog/general/abortion-restrictions-hurt-women-of-color.html.
Sophie Lovering is a rising junior at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) and minoring in American Sign Language and Deaf Studies. She is involved in the Penn Undergraduate Law Journal, Penn Special Olympics, Penn's Beyond Arrests: Re-Thinking Systematic Oppression, and Penn Women's Rowing. She is interested in criminal justice reform and social justice advocacy.