Human Rights Trump State Rights For Pregnant Capable People

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In December of 2021, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that directly challenges the 1973 landmark decision of Roe v. Wade. This is the first time the Court will rule on the constitutionality of a pre-viability abortion ban since Roe. Weakening or overturning Roe poses a threat not just to the right to access abortion services, but also to one’s fundamental right to make personal decisions beyond abortion, as well as the guarantee of individual liberty. 

On September 20, 2021, the National Birth Equity Collaborative, along with leading scholars in the maternal health field, submitted a maternal health amicus brief centering birth equity (a first-of-its-kind in an abortion case) that addresses the maternal health implications of this case – for people in Mississippi and transnationally. The stakes are incredibly high and the consequences of a Roe reversal would have a detrimental impact on people with the capacity for pregnancy, particularly Black mamas and birthing people. 

• Black people in the United States have and continue to experience violations of bodily autonomy; including but not limited to enslavement, Jim Crow, hyper-surveillance by police and child protective services — both abortion restrictions and higher rates of maternal mortality and morbidity are part of that legacy of exploitation, violence, and control. The silos separating them are false. Mississippi has a particularly atrocious recent history of sterilizing Black pregnant capable people including civil rights activist Fanny Lou Hamer in the notorious “Mississippi Appendectomy” program. Black women have had their reproduction suppressed and controlled for generations — thus addressing that legacy of reproductive coercion and eugenics does not require and must not justify the further eroding of Black women’s reproductive autonomy through increased state control like abortion restrictions. Instead, it actually requires more reproductive freedom and equitable access to resources. 

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Abortion restrictions are not about protecting Black women’s health—states that enact the most abortion restrictions are also failing to pass supportive policies that we know would actually support people who want to form and grow families. Mississippi has one of the highest maternal mortality and maternal morbidity rates in the country, but claim to be protecting and upholding maternal health by imposing arbitrary viability restrictions on abortion. Additionally, if the federal protections of Roe are overturned, the following 11 states have trigger laws in place to ban all or nearly all abortions: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah. This scenario is unacceptable and must be prevented.

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Fundamentally, these conversations are not hypothetical and we declare that in this instance, States’ Rights should not trump Human Rights. We believe that abortion restrictions are an attack on and violation of civil rights. Black people and particularly Black women have never had the full rights to be considered human and this is just another instance of that. Who gets to decide what risks people take? The arbiter of these decisions matter given the history and legacy of white supremacy and racism in the U.S. In Mississippi, these abortion restrictions are not about the safety of the procedure. The people that experience pregnancy need to be the ones who control the outcome of their pregnancy without interference from the government or any state.

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When people with the capacity for pregnancy are denied the right to make decisions about abortion, it also becomes easier to deny pregnant and birthing people other types of decision-making during pregnancy and birth, harming both those who want to end a pregnancy and those who want to birth. Abuses later in pregnancy and birth (such as forced interventions, coercive practices, denial of informed consent, disrespectful care) reflect how normalized depriving pregnant people of bodily autonomy and decision-making in life and death, often in the name of concern for the fetus, has become, especially when the pregnant/birthing person is a person of color. In this fight over bodily autonomy, our amicus brief aims to show how abortion restrictions and maternal health are inextricably linked to and influenced by one another. Texas, Mississippi and all of the states in line to pass similar legislation are signaling to the world how much they value the viability of Black lives. With this case, the Supreme Court has an opportunity to show that the United States understands Human Rights are more important than gerrymandered states rights.

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