ICYMI: This Black Maternal Health Week, Abortion Opponents Double Down on Commitment to Exacerbating Health Disparities within Black Communities

NEW YORK, NY - During this year’s observance of Black Maternal Health Week (April 11-17), abortion opponents continued to demonstrate their commitment to stripping essential health care away from the public and exacerbating health disparities in Black communities. Black Maternal Health Week was created by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA), in part, to highlight inequities in Black maternal health.

On April 7th, a federal judge in Texas declared the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) approval of mifepristone, a medication that has been used safely and effectively for more than two decades, unlawful. Mifepristone is one of the two medications used in the majority of medication abortions in the U.S.

On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an administrative stay allowing mifepristone’s FDA approval to remain unchanged until Wednesday, April 19 while the Court considers the Department of Justice and Danco’s applications for relief in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine et al v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration et al. This means mifepristone will remain accessible and on the market, at least for now.

If the federal judge’s ruling from April 7 is allowed to take effect, it could devastate patients’ ability to access the drug for medication abortion and miscarriage care nationwide — even in states where abortion remains legal — and disrupt the FDA’s process for approving essential drugs in the interest of public health and safety.

Prenatal and maternal health are not separate issues from abortion access, and these politically-motivated rulings are particularly concerning for Black women, who are more than three times as likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than white women — a fact that these rulings ignore. Health care providers must have every method, treatment, and tool available to help families achieve their family planning goals. Abortion care is one of the tools that patients may need. And all people should have access to abortion care if they need it.

Rather than focusing on policies that increase Black pregnant people’s access to high-quality health care before, during, and after pregnancy, these judges have used false, medically-inaccurate reasoning to attempt to restrict abortion access nationwide.

Last Thursday, the president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Alexis McGill Johnson, joined Rev. Al Sharpton for a conversation on reproductive rights at the National Action Network Convention:

“We see the fact that the maternal mortality rate is three times higher for Black women than it is for white women… So the reality is whether or not we are able to carry a pregnancy to term means that we are going to be more likely to be put in harm’s way. Our ability to make a decision — between me, my partner, my pastor — that’s where the decision needs to lie. Not with some Trump-appointed judge, and that’s essentially where we are right now.”

“[Black women] are living at the intersection of racism, sexism, lack of access to transportation and so many other barriers... The majority of people who seek access to abortion are already parents, so they are just trying to control their family size so they can provide for the children they already have. So that means they have to take off from work, that means they have to travel out of state, that means they could potentially be [criminalized]… And we know the same states that have these bans are also the same states with the highest maternal mortality rates and the lowest child well-being rates. We know that when we are impacted by these bans, we know the harm that will happen to us.”

Watch the full conversation here (beginning at the 2:22 mark).

 Because of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, more than 1 in 3 women — and more people who can become pregnant — currently live in a state where they no longer fully control their own lives and bodies. It’s evident that solving the dire Black maternal mortality crisis is not the priority. Rather, depriving people of their ability to make their own decisions about their bodies, families, and futures is the intended outcome.

 Learn more about how to support abortion access at BansOff.org.

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