Periscope OPINION
18 NEWSWEEK.COM
If upheld, this law will
render abortion access
nearly impossible for
low-income women.IN OPPOSITION In May 2019, “Handmaid’s Tale”–costumed demonstrators outside the Louisiana
Supreme Court in New Orleans protest a bill banning abortion after detection of a heartbeat.country and twice the rate of white
women in the state. Because of this,
it is often very difficult to arrange
time off and rarely with pay. Because
black women in Louisiana (61.2 per-
cent of those who accessed abortion
in 2018) are disproportionately low
income, the costs of transporta-
tion, time off from work and child
care can render intra-state travel to
an abortion clinic financially andlogistically unattainable. For example,
48 percent of the residents of East
Carroll Parish live in poverty, but
they would be forced to travel 260
miles to the only remaining clinic
should this law be enforced.
Abortion access under these con-
ditions would be impossible even for
black women who live above the pov-
erty line. In 2018, this group’s median
annual income was just $27,058,
compared with $37,485 for white
women and $56,843 for white men.
Even if a woman were to somehow
scrape together the funds to travel to
a distant clinic, she would likely face
a host of dire financial consequences,
including an inability to pay rent or
purchase food—a dramatic example
of how income inequality seriously
undermines black women’s abil-
ity to exercise their constitutional
rights. If upheld, this law will render
abortion access nearly impossible for
low-income women, who are dispro-
portionately black. Moreover, these
facts say nothing of the myriad ways,
in which forcing a woman to bear
children perpetuates the unending
cycle of poverty.
Constitutional rights should not
be available only to the economically
privileged. What kind of a country do
we want and what are the values of
the country in which we live? The
Supreme Court will be required to
answer these questions soon. It is
my hope, and the hope of millions of
Americans who support a woman’s
right to choice, that the Court will
provide the answer that will permit
us to continue to believe in the rule
of law and in our democracy.Ơ Shira A. Scheindlin is a former
United States District judge in the
Southern District of New York. She is
co-chair of the board of the Lawyers’
Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.There is no question that the Lou-
isiana law will most heavily burden
black women. Here are the most
relevant facts. Abortion is a consti-
tutional right. As the Court found in
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt
just four years ago, the Texas admis-
sions privilege law infringed on that
right by erecting a particularly high
barrier to abortion access for poor,
rural or disadvantaged women. Argu-
ably, women in Louisiana fare even
worse than those in Texas. Louisiana
is the third poorest state in this coun-
try, and 33 percent of black women
there live below the poverty line.
Thirty-five percent of black women
in Louisiana work in service jobs:
one of the highest percentages in the
E^0IL<KASKʔAFPʔ*ETT<MARCH 27, 2020