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The FDA currently only allows mifepristone, one of the two drugs typically used in medication abortion, to be “dispensed in certain health-care settings.” (Photo: Olivier Douliery/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.)
As abortion-rights supporters fear for the fate of Roe v. Wade amid Republicans’ push to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat, it’s worth recognizing the existing financial difficulties that abortion seekers — and those who are denied the procedure — face today.
Ginsburg, a longtime defender of abortion rights and other women’s rights, died Friday at 87, paving the way for a Supreme Court nomination fight just weeks before the presidential election. President Trump said Monday he planned to announce his nominee, who would tilt the court to a 6-3 conservative majority if confirmed by the Senate, on Friday or Saturday.
Amy Comey Barrett has said it’s ‘very unlikely’ that the fundamental right provided by Roe v. Wade would be overturned and — instead — suggested the current controversy lies in public vs. private funding for abortions.
There were 17 abortion-related cases before U.S. circuit courts of appeals as of Sunday, according to a list provided by a Planned Parenthood spokesperson. That’s only “one step away from the Supreme Court,” Anisha Singh, the director of judiciary and democracy affairs for the pro-abortion rights Planned Parenthood Action Fund, told MarketWatch.
“The fate of our rights, our freedoms, our health care, our bodies, our lives, and our country depend on what happens over the coming months,” Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement after Ginsburg’s death.
Those three Planned Parenthood organizations are all proponents of abortion rights.
Women who want abortions but don’t receive them also appear to endure lasting socioeconomic consequences, some studies show, including this study published in the American Journal of Public Health. Being denied a wanted abortion is associated with higher odds of poverty, greater likelihood of receiving public assistance.
It can also lead to higher amounts of debt, according to this study by researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a collaborative research group at the University of California, San Francisco, which makes “freedom to achieve reproductive wellbeing” as central to its mission.
“Not only is it very difficult when people are already facing economic insecurity to get an abortion,” Abolfazli said, “if they’re denied that, they’re then shoved further into insecurity.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, offered condolences on Ginsburg’s death and went on to call the Supreme Court vacancy “a turning point for the nation in the fight to protect its most vulnerable, the unborn.”
“The pro-life grassroots have full confidence that President Trump, Leader [Mitch] McConnell, Chairman [Lindsey] Graham, and every pro-life Senator will move swiftly to fill this vacancy,” she said in a statement.
Reports suggest the frontrunner to fill Ginsburg’s seat is Amy Coney Barrett, a federal appeals-court judge whose past writings have referred to “unborn victims” of abortion and questioned the importance of adhering to precedent. When Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, raised concern during Barrett’s 2017 confirmation hearing that “the dogma lives loudly within you,” Barrett replied, “It’s never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law.”
Barrett has also been paraphrased as saying the watershed 1973 ruling Roe had created “through judicial fiat a framework of abortion on demand.” The judge has added, however, that it’s “very unlikely” the fundamental right provided by Roe v. Wade would be overturned — and suggested the current controversy lies in public versus private funding for abortions.
The Supreme Court in July struck down a 2014 Louisiana law requiring that doctors who provide abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s liberal bloc, writing that the result in June Medical Services v. Russo was “controlled by our decision four years ago invalidating a nearly identical Texas law” in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. But he noted that he had joined the dissent in the 2016 Texas case, and continued to believe it had been “wrongly decided.”
Many already face barriers to abortion access
About 77% of Americans want Roe v. Wade to remain in place, though many people also support additional restrictions or policy changes, according to a 2019 NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.
If Roe were overturned, abortion would stay legal in 21 states; be unprotected by state and district law in five states, the District of Columbia and two U.S. territories; and likely be prohibited in 24 states and three territories, according to the nonprofit Center for Reproductive Rights, which supports access to safe abortion.
Even with Roe as the law of the land, many women still encounter obstacles to abortion access, including widespread clinic closures and restrictions on when and how they can obtain an abortion.
But even with Roe as the law of the land, many women still encounter obstacles to abortion access, including widespread clinic closures and restrictions on when and how they can obtain an abortion. Some six in 10 women live in states that have shown “hostility” toward abortion rights, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health think tank that supports abortion rights.
“Some people are already living in a world where there is no right to abortion, even though Roe still stands,” said Leila Abolfazli, the director of federal reproductive rights for the National Women’s Law Center, which supports abortion access.
The Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds for abortions under Medicaid except in certain cases, poses another barrier to low-income people; a majority of states don’t allow their own funds to be used for abortions for Medicaid-insured women. Meanwhile, a number of states restrict insurance coverage of abortion in private insurance plans, health-insurance exchange plans, and/or public employees’ health plans.
A state’s abortion-policy environment can also factor into the cost of abortion.
“You can’t just think about the cost of the procedure — it’s also all the costs that go into getting the care in states where [it’s] already very difficult to get,” Abolfazli said. “It’s overwhelming how the costs can just add up.”
The Guttmacher Institute notes that many people encounter “substantial financial and logistical barriers” to seeking abortions. Laws that require two clinic visits, for example, are associated with a $107 increase in the price of an abortion, according to one 2015 analysis.
“The procedure can cost several hundred dollars, and you have all the logistical barriers you’ll have to hop through: multiple trips, days off work, lack of paid leave, schedules that you can’t control, children at home, hotel stays,” Abolfazli told MarketWatch. “For a lot of people, that means that the care at clinics is put out of reach for them.”
Three out of four women who obtained abortions in 2014 were poor or low-income, the Guttmacher Institute says. Women of color made up more than half of abortion patients that year, the most recent for which data were available, with Black patients accounting for 28% of procedures and Hispanic patients accounting for 25%.
If Roe were no more, the financial barriers facing abortion seekers — particularly patients of color — would be “exacerbated in ways that are unfathomable and unacceptable,” said Singh of Planned Parenthood.
