Poor Women in the United States Don’t Have Abortion Rights

http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/poor-women-dont-have-abortion-rights

"Now, though, they see introducing a doomed bill as a way of helping expose how unjust the status quo is. Most people simply aren’t aware of the Hyde Amendment, let alone what a huge hardship it poses to some of the most disadvantaged Americans. Let’s do the math: On average, a first-trimester abortion costs nearly $500 out-of-pocket. Even after the expansion of Medicaid under Obama, it is a program for the extremely poor. In the 29 states that have accepted the expansion, a family of three must make below about $27,700 a year to qualify. In the states that have refused the expansion, the average eligibility limit is less than $9,200 for a family of three, and childless adults don’t qualify at all. In other words, the Hyde Amendment ensures that, in many states, mothers who are getting by on less than $800 a month are one broken condom away from being forced to pay, at minimum, more than half that in order to avoid having another child.

If that seems like a nearly impossible calculus, that’s because it’s supposed to be. It’s no secret that the intention of the Hyde Amendment was to keep women from getting abortions. Just take it from then-Congressman Henry Hyde when he made his case for the policy on the House floor back in 1977: “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the ... Medicaid bill.” The Supreme Court put it slightly more delicately when it declared the policy constitutional in 1980, deciding that the government could choose to “encourage” childbirth over abortion by paying for the former but not the latter.

So how many women have been “encouraged” to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term thanks to the policy? The best estimate, according to a 2009 review of the research by the Guttmacher Institute, is that 18 to 37 percent of women on Medicaid who would otherwise get an abortion instead give birth due to the lack of funding. Over the past 39 years, that has amounted to more than one million people who have been unable to exercise a constitutionally protected right solely because of their economic status. (Or, in the gleeful language of the anti-choice side, 1.1 million Americans are alive today because of the Hyde Amendment.)

<snip>

Of course, even a $1,500 procedure at 20 weeks is less expensive than raising a kid, which is probably why most women do whatever it takes to win this desperate race against the clock. After all, that’s typically the reason they’re choosing to end their pregnancy to begin with: Three-fourths of all the women who have abortions in the United States—40 percent of whom are living below the federal poverty level—say they got one because they could not afford a child. A research project out of the University of California–San Francisco shows the devastating economic consequences for those who lose the race. The ongoing study, following more than 1,000 women, is comparing those who had passed the gestational cut-off—and, thus, were turned away from clinics—to a similar group who just made the deadline. Those who were denied abortions were three times more likely to end up below the federal poverty level two years later."

(It was startling to me, when the Hyde Amendment was discussed in the context of the ACA, how many people on DU thought there was a network of charities that provide abortion funds for women who can't afford to obtain them. There really aren't.)