1 Olivia Bonomo Dr Trask 03 March 2023 Political Science 1010 Section 002 Overturning of Roe v Wade Will Disproportionality Affect Vulnerable Populations The issue of how much control the U S government should have over people s bodies and their medical choices has been an ongoing debate in our nation for years On January 22nd 1973 in Roe v Wade the Supreme Court decided that the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment included abortion as a fundamental right However the government retained the power to regulate or restrict abortion access depending on the stage of pregnancy For the next 49 years states health care providers and citizens fought over what limits the government could place on abortion access Abortion was fundamentally legal in all 50 states during that period until Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022 allowing states to create their own abortion laws or outright ban abortion The overturning of Roe v Wade will disproportionately affect vulnerable populations including women families of color and those in low incomes brackets by making access to safe abortions more difficult The Supreme Court s decision to overturn Roe v Wade will disproportionately affect America s most vulnerable populations by negatively affecting women especially women of color as they are the most common group to obtain abortions Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Black women in the United States are nearly four times more likely to have abortions than white women while Latina women are twice as likely Bose 2022 Because more women of color live in states that will ban abortion they will be affected by the ban with a greater magnitude than their white counterparts Women who live in southern states such as Mississippi will bear most of the burden because of the more restrictive laws and bans Furthermore In Mississippi Black women accounted for 74 of abortions in 2019 according to the Kaiser Family Foundation The high rate of abortions among women of color is due to many factors including population makeup lack of healthcare and financial disparities Overall the overturning of Roe v Wade will affect women of color more and it will force them to have to make difficult decisions Furthermore the overturn of Roe v Wade will affect the most vulnerable populations because it will cause those struggling financially to face even more difficulties and obstacles when trying to obtain a safe abortion Women living in poverty will be disproportionately harmed by the decision because ending the constitutional right to abortion will further marginalize poor people who can become pregnant The UCSF Turnaway Study found that women who were turned away from an abortion and went on to give birth were more likely to live in poverty Seventy two percent of the women who did not receive a wanted abortion lived in poverty after 5 years Sheils 2022 The overturn of Roe v Wade will force women to go through unwanted pregnancies when they are unable to support themselves and the child This 2 will continue the cycle of poverty for the child as well because their parent will most likely have to take on more jobs and will not be able to fully provide for them Furthermore people living in poverty who become pregnant will have a more difficult time getting out of poverty once they have to support a child which further exacerbates the poverty issue as well as disproportionately affecting impoverished people Equally important Denying access to abortion hurts children as well Data from the Turnaway Study shows that children born as a result of a denied abortion are more likely to live below the poverty line than children born from a subsequent pregnancy from a mother who received an abortion Sheils 2022 This court decision does not only affect impoverished adults but children as well continuing the cycle of poverty for future generations Lastly the Supreme Court s decision will affect our most unprotected populations by causing those with already limited access to healthcare to experience even greater difficulty accessing a safe abortion exacerbating health inequities Abortion is a form of healthcare and removing that aspect of reproductive healthcare will put patients with poor access to healthcare in even more danger According to the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine The U S already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates of any developed country especially for women of color and state laws limiting or impacting abortion create more barriers to obtaining safe and effective reproductive care McNutt 2022 Placing more restrictions on reproductive healthcare in the U S will cause maternal mortality rates to rise as well as infant mortality rates The decision to overturn Roe v Wade is the last thing the United States needs in relation to quality healthcare for women and it will disproportionately affect those who already have limited access to quality healthcare In addition women with unintended pregnancies are less likely to receive needed prenatal care can be at higher risk for medical complications and are more likely to experience poor neonatal outcomes McNutt 2022 Therefore this Supreme Court decision does not benefit the mother or the child and will most likely increase the rates of mother and infant mortality A common opposing view is that the laws around abortion should be left up to each state as people in various states hold differing opinions on abortion Conservatives have long mocked Roe as unrelated to the Constitution or as Justice Samuel Alito put it in his draft opinion remarkably loose in its treatment of the constitutional text Justice Alito one of the justices who voted to overturn Roe v Wade Alito described the the 1973 ruling that upheld Roe v Wade as an unfocused analysis whose message seemed to be that the abortion right could be found somewhere in the Consti tution and that specifying its exact location was not of paramount importance It held that the abortion right which is not mentioned in the Constitution is part of a right to privacy which is also not mentioned Kruzel 2022 However this reasoning is faulty because not everyone in a given state necessarily supports or doesn t support abortion Therefore if a majority of a state does not support abortion that does not mean everyone in the state does not and makes it difficult for people in states with strict abortion laws to obtain a safe and legal abortion By the government assuming they are