The Viscious Cycle of Women’s Reproductive Healthcare

An Explanation of the Seemingly Never-ending Struggles that Minority Women Endure in Regards to their Reproductive Health.

The fight for control over women’s bodies has been prevalent for centuries. To this day, women (especially minority women), are still struggling for complete autonomy over their bodies when it comes to reproductive healthcare. The power of the state is overwhelmingly controlling the policies that dictate what women are able to do with their own bodies. The cycle of never-ending struggle for rights over our own bodies always ends up with the state. Minority women in particular are the targets of the many laws and policies created to perpetuate state control. There are so many issues regarding women’s healthcare that I could go on for days. However, for the purpose of this particular article, I will focus on policy regarding abortions and how minority women are primarily affected. Furthermore, when I say minority women, I mean women of color, women of lower socio-economic status or both.

I will begin with an explanation of how the Hyde Amendment, originally passed in 1976, perpetuates state control over women’s bodies and minority women’s bodies in particular. The proposal of the Hyde Amendment was a backlash to the ruling of the monumental case Roe v. Wade in 1973, which stated that women have the right to an abortion. With this new court ruling, many anti-abortionists wanted to create restrictions that would limit who was actually able to attain an abortion. It was at this time when the Hyde Amendment was enacted. Originally, the Hyde Amendment limited access to abortions only to women whose lives would possibly be endangered if the fetus was carried to term. Over the years, the amendment was altered several times. In 1994, President Bill Clinton changed the amendment to include women who were victims of rape or incest. This particular alteration is problematic because of the time, money, and effort it would take to prove that a pregnancy resulted from a rape or an act of incest. More specifically, women of low socio-economic status or women of color would have a harder time proving these than say, white women with money and power. Therefore, these alterations and the Amendment itself really only make abortion access more difficult for minority women; these obstacles do not apply to women with power.

The Hyde Amendment is still prevlant today and is affecting women across the country. Now, the amendment states that federal funds cannot be used to help women attain abortions unless the mother’s life is in danger, she was a victim of rape, or the pregnancy resulted from an act of incest. Moreover, the amendment restricts the use of funds allocated for the Department of Health and Human Services which affects Medicaid recipients in particular. The restrictions are troublesome because poor women are primarily the recipients of federal funds like Medicaid. With this type of language, The Hyde Amendment is blatantly targeting women of lower socio-economic status. Currently, Medicaid helps support 1 in every 5 women of reproductive age. That means that the Hyde Amendment has restricted 1 in every 5 women from attaining an abortion, particularly the poor.

The anti-abortion sentiments did not stop with the enactment of the Hyde Amendment, however. In 2013, for example, a new law, Texas House Bill 2, emerged. This particular law was a huge victory for ant-abotionists and pro-life activists. Texas HB 2 stated:

• Abortion clinicians and providers must have attained their admitting privileges at a hospital no farther than 30 miles away from the clinic.
• All clinics must have upgraded their equiptment and facilities to become ambulatory surgical centers (regardless if they would ever actually use said equiptment or not).
• Clinics could not perform abortions later than 20 weeks gestation.
• All patients must visit the clinic a minimum of four times (one of these visits must be for an ultrasound) before actually being able to attain the abortion.

By all of these rules, only 10 abortion-providing clinics would be able to legally practice in the state of Texas. In a state that houses almost 28 million people, and cover 268,597 square miles, having only 10 abortion clinics is entirely problematic. Logically, as a result of HB 2, many of the clinics that provided abortions were forced to shut down. For some women, if they wished to attain an abortion they would have to travel for hundreds of miles just to reach a clinic that met these harsh standards of legal operation. For women with resources and power, traveling for a abortion would not be an issue, and therefore, the HB 2 restrictions do not apply to those women. For women who do not have resources however, specifically minority and lower-class women, HB 2 adds more and more obstacles for theese women to overcome. In other words, these laws only affect minority women.

The cycle of struggling for control over own bodies has only continued since the passing of Texas House Bill 2. The case Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt was a victory for women not only in Texas, but also for others across the country. The ruling of this case effectively overturned the laws put in place by Texas HB 2. The court deemed that the previously enacted laws placed “undue burdens” on clinics and providers that would make it even more difficult for women to attain abortions. The decision also banned “unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.” While this victory was definitely a step in the right direction, it could have been too little too late. Unfortunately, because of the HB 2 restrictions, many clinics in Texas were forced to shut down. Due to insufficient funds, most of them have not been able to reopen even after HB 2 was overturned, leaving many minority women still unable to get a legal abortion nearby.

In an apparent backlash to the Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt ruling, Texas is in the process of enacting even more restrictions on women’s reproductive healthcare. In the beginning of 2017, Texas Senate Bill 258 was proposed. Under this law, the medical remains from an abortion would need to be cremated or buried, and it will be illegal for them to be donated to science or disposed of as medical waste. If this bill passes and is put into action, it will only add another obstacle for women, minority women in particular, to overcome when seeking an abortion. Not only will SB 258 provide a more traumatic element to the already difficult act of getting an abortion, it will also increase the costs for patients or clinics. Someone will need to pay for the cremations and burials, and lower socio-economic class women certainly cannot afford the extra financial burden. Once again, this particular law will not affect women with resources and power, only the lower class.

The struggle between invidicual power and state power over women’s bodies has been prevalent for centuries. The real trouble with state control is that it affects minority women more so than others. Laws often do not apply to women with money and power became they can simply find loopholes or ways around the laws. However, for women without those resources, reproductive healthcare laws are incredibly burdensome. The recent and current laws being proposed in Texas are a perfect example of the cycle of struggle that minority women are facing when it comes to reproductive healthcare.