Opinion: Rulings ensure further cruelty from restricting abortion care
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This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed nearly 50 years of settled law in overturning Roe v. Wade. This decision has already triggered a wave of restrictions and outright bans on abortion across the country. The court's reasoning also makes clear that overturning Roe signals a wave of reconsiderations to come, including the rights to birth control, same-sex intimacy, and gay marriage.
Abortion remains safe and legal in Iowa as we write. Safe and legal abortion is the will of Iowans. But the future is deeply uncertain. A week earlier, the Iowa Supreme Court demonstrated deep contempt for legal precedent — not to mention the welfare of Iowans — when it forced a stunning reversal on a 2018 decision that enshrined the right to abortion care in Iowa’s state constitution. Iowa was once a beacon of care in the Midwest. Not anymore.
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This reversal lies at the heart of the GOP’s deep-seated cruelty toward and hatred for poor and marginalized communities. Since taking office in 2017, Gov. Kim Reynolds has waged a war on everyday Iowans. She proposed massive overhauls to state budgets including a proposal to cut Medicaid supporting the state’s poor and disabled by nearly $10 million the year she was elected governor. She has worked diligently with her Republican colleagues in the state assembly to deny health care to trans Iowans on Medicaid — a move recently declared unconstitutional. They have succeeded in gutting rights for workers — stripping unions of their power and benefits from Iowa’s public employees.
And during the pandemic, she outlawed government requirements for mask wearing as a critical tool for preventing the spread of COVID-19, and recently outlawed mandates for vaccinations against the deadly virus. These guidelines were meant to protect front-line workers, such as daycare providers, teachers, and service workers who often barely make minimum wage. Public education, a cornerstone of upward mobility in the United States, has been assaulted by GOP proposals to ban books, jail teachers, and divest millions from our public schools to benefit private institutions. Also this month, Reynolds signed a bill cutting access to unemployment benefits to Iowans, placing people already on the margins of poverty further into debt and forcing them to take lower-paying jobs. Historically, Iowa has one of the lowest poverty rates in the country, but not for long.
Lack of access to abortion perpetuates poverty. From 2008 to 2010, The Turnaway Study — the gold standard in reproductive care research — followed over 1,000 women in 30 clinics across 21 states. It revealed that women who were denied a wanted abortion and went on to give birth “experienced an increase in household poverty lasting at least four years relative to those who received an abortion.” The study also found that several years after an abortion denial, women were less likely to have enough money to cover basic living expenses like food, housing and transportation. The study concluded that being denied an abortion lowered credit scores, "increased a woman’s amount of debt and increased the number of their negative public financial records, such as bankruptcies and evictions.”
At a time of rising economic inequality and lack of access to robust government support for economically poor families, attempts to deny Iowans access to abortion care reaffirm the Iowa GOP’s inhumane treatment of its citizens. What is the right to life if not a right to our bodies, our health, and the right to raise families in safe and sustainable communities?
Iowans must come together to protect each other. In the coming months and years, we will see assaults on rights long established and taken for granted until now. Losing Roe is a devastating blow to communities already on the margins of care in our society, and a frightening sign of what is to come.
Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz and Lina-Maria Murillo are scholars of reproductive health history and rhetoric and are educators at the University of Iowa.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Supreme Court ruling, abortion restrictions inflict cruelty
