Photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times
Today marks the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that recognized the constitutional right to access safe, legal abortion in the United States.
It is, of course, important to protect Roe. It’s also important to recognize that for many across the country, the protections of Roe v. Wade—and ready access to the full range of reproductive health care services—haven’t been a reality for years. Thanks to an onslaught of state-level abortion restrictions, access to safe legal abortion has already been pushed out of reach for many people of color, immigrants, low-income people, young people, and other marginalized people.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, at least 424 anti-abortion bills have been passed at the state level since 2010.
Here in Pennsylvania, anti-choice lawmakers in the Pennsylvania Legislature have been promoting dangerous abortion restrictions that target low-income women and women of color. How has abortion access changed in Pennsylvania since Roe? In the mid-1970s, Pennsylvania had approximately 145 abortion providers. Today, we have 17 abortion facilities, five of which provide medical abortion only.
Of course, many of those same lawmakers work to block bills that would decrease maternal and infant mortality, a hypocrisy we explored in our recent op-ed.
Meanwhile, as anti-choice politicians promote the interests of well-financed special interest groups, citizen support for equal access to safe, legal abortion is the highest it’s been in years. A recent poll showed 73% of respondents said they do not want Roe v. Wade overturned, and 67% thought abortion should be legal in most cases.
There’s good news.
Even in this hostile environment, we see opportunities to not just fight back against the ongoing assaults, but to re-envision what reproductive health, rights, and justice should look like moving forward.
Just last week, we filed litigation against the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services on behalf of a group of Pennsylvania abortion providers to challenge a state statute that bans abortion coverage through the Pennsylvania Medicaid program. We are co-representing the plaintiffs with attorney David S. Cohen; Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and the private law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP.
The New York Times highlighted this lawsuit as “evidence of the central inequity around abortion: It is easy for women with means to get an abortion, while poor women are at the mercy of statutes that restrict their rights.”
Read the rest of the New York Times piece here.
Want to learn more about the Medicaid lawsuit and the state of reproductive rights in Pennsylvania?
Join us at Flipping the Script: Abortion Access in 2019 and Beyond, an event hosted by Women’s Medical Fund on Wednesday January 23 at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia.
The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.
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