Why Should You Care?
In 2022, women’s reproductive healthcare is at greater risk than ever before.
Public health centers across the country are closing at alarming rates. In just the first 30 days after Roe v. Wade was overturned by SCOTUS, over 43 clinics have stopped offering abortion care or closed completely. As more and more clinics shut their door, millions of women are robbed of access to safe and affordable life-saving healthcare and family planning services.
Abortions represent just 7.5% of the care women seek at Planned Parenthood locations. But broad pro-life legislation introduced by the GOP is slashing federal and local funding for these clinics. They are forcibly relocated to a handful of pro-choice states.
By the age of 45, 1 in 4 women will have an abortion, and 18% of all pregnancies end in abortion.
Yet, a minority of these women —approximately 38%— live in states that publicly support or have passed legislation to protect a woman’s right to safe abortion access.
As of September 2022, 13 states have passed near or total abortion bans with little or no exceptions in cases of rape and incest. That is 26% of the entire country! And at least 10 others have passed legislation that will make passing full or highly restrictive abortion bans easy.
However, Abortion is not the only reproductive right at risk. Nearly 20 million women live in what are known as contraceptive deserts. These women do not have reasonable access to a health center that offers all contraceptive methods—like IUD’s, pills, patches, rings, and implants. And 1.2 million of these women live in counties that do not have a single health clinic that offers all options.
Access to comprehensive and affordable family planning services is critical to women’s futures. Without access to birth control, nearly 85 out of every 100 women will become pregnant in just a year of having regular sex.
And once women become mothers, they routinely face discrimination. They are expected to exit the workforce and take on the bulk of unpaid domestic labor in the home while their male counterparts continue to make career progress.
It is vital that a woman gets to choose when and if she becomes a mother. Without the ability to make that choice through contraceptive access and comprehensive abortion services, women will never be able to achieve full equality with men.
Our Stance
We believe that every woman has the right to access safe and low-cost abortion services without having to travel thousands of miles to access care. The Supreme Court made a mistake when it overturned Roe v. Wade and robbed millions of women of the right to bodily autonomy. We will fight to codify abortion rights. Every woman should be guaranteed access to local abortion services if they want or need them.
We also believe that the United States needs to do more to eliminate contraceptive deserts and ensure that every woman has access to high-quality family planning services. No matter what state a woman lives in, they should be able to get the birth control they need in the form they choose.
What Can We Do?
- Codify abortion through Congress.
- End the mass prosecution of reproductive healthcare providers
- Restore funding for community health providers like Planned Parenthood
- Pass legislation to allow federal funding to cover abortion care.
- Require every insurance provider to provide comprehensive coverage for all forms of birth control and reproductive healthcare.
- Teach accurate and complete sex education in every public K-12 school district.