For women of color, the right to control our own bodies has been denied to us throughout our four hundred-year history in the United States. The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which placed the right to an abortion within a larger right of personal privacy, was, contrary to many critics, not just a victory for White women. It was also a landmark in the struggle of people of color – and particularly Black people – to gain agency over our own bodies and reproductive lives.
Today, nearly 50 years later, a vastly different Supreme Court, deliberately and deceitfully stacked with anti-abortion radicals, is posed to decimate the right to an abortion as a matter of federal constitutional law in a decision regarding the legality of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. If, as is expected, the Court’s anti-abortion radicals leave it up to state legislatures to determine the legality of an abortion, it is mission critical that the Colorado legislature act now to protect abortion rights.
It is time for Colorado lawmakers to stop giving lip-service to abortion rights, and STEP UP and LEAD the way on the Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA). State lawmakers must introduce and pass RHEA now, and Governor Polis must sign it into law without delay.
The right to individual self-determination – the right to control our own bodies – is a right so precious that for centuries African Americans have laid down their lives in pursuit of it. From mass kidnapping, enslavement, forced birthing and forced familial separations, the systemic racist terror of post-Reconstruction, to segregation both public and personal, to medical experimentation, to mass incarceration, to coerced birth control and sterilization, our blackness has been regulated and exploited by law and by custom.
Of course, the ability to control one’s own reproductive health and decisions is deeply personal to all, however as an African American woman who shares a collective, centuries-long history of bodily exploitation, coercion, and denial, that agency is beyond sacrosanct. Although critics have (with some element of truth), considered the right to abortion guaranteed in Roe v. Wade to be a victory for middle and upper income white women, the decision was indeed a significant victory for Black Americans.
Unfortunately, Roe didn’t guarantee access to abortion regardless of income or health insurance status, and much work remains ahead to make access a reality, but the decision was a significant starting point.
Without that starting point, pregnant people will be at the mercy of their state legislatures. Which means politicians will determine our physical and mental health, educational opportunity, and financial well-being. According to the Guttmacher Institute, state legislatures passed 106 abortion restrictions last year, the most since the Court decided Roe in 1973.
If, but more likely when, the Supreme Court gives state legislatures the greenlight to restrict or ban abortion later this year, an estimated 26 states will likely ban abortion outright. Barriers to abortion access always fall heaviest on those who already have the least access to health care – communities of color, low-income people, young people, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ community, and rural Coloradans. We cannot ignore the needs of the many because of the lack of leadership from the few.
Colorado voters decisively defeated four anti-abortion statewide ballot measures between 2008 and 2020. However there is no law in Colorado that explicitly protects the right to an abortion. That is why we must protect abortion access and reproductive rights with the Reproductive Health Equity Act that must be introduced in the Colorado General Assembly during the 2022 legislative session.
The abortion rights organization Cobalt and the reproductive justice organization COLOR, along with more than 35 other grassroots organizations, are supporting RHEA, and yes that means Black Women too. The legislation will ensure every individual has the fundamental right to choose or refuse contraception; every individual who becomes pregnant has a fundamental right to choose to continue a pregnancy and give birth or to have an abortion; and a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus will not have independent rights under the laws of Colorado.
In Colorado, as across the U.S., we have a Black health and health care crisis, and a Black maternal health crisis in particular. So today, we start with making sure our lawmakers pass legislation that really is going to help women of color. We must expand access to health care – which by definition includes abortion and other reproductive care – for everyone to help close that gap.
Laws like RHEA will take a crucial step in that direction. Women of color must be able to decide for ourselves if and when we want to have children, and Colorado law must affirm our humanity and agency to consider and control OUR bodies, OUR lives, and OUR futures.
Portia Prescott serves on the Cobalt Board of Directors and Dani Newsum is Cobalt’s Director of Strategic Partnerships. Cobalt is an advocacy group for reproductive rights.
Never looked at abortion as being a black vs. white issue. After reading this letter, I still don’t see it that way. My opinion is it’s a colorless female issue.
https://socialchangenyu.com/review/how-race-selective-and-sex-selective-bans-on-abortion-expose-the-color-coded-dimensions-of-the-right-to-abortion-and-deficiencies-in-constitutional-protections-for-women-of-color/