Roe v. Wade BHT Board Position Statement
/The BHT Board reaffirms our belief that reproductive rights are human rights, and vital to achieving health justice is ensuring all people have the highest level of autonomy and choice in determining what healthy looks like for them. We recognize the healthcare systems roots in white supremacy and patriarchy, and will be critical of our own role and power in the system to ensure our work disrupts these harmful behaviors and shifts power to the women, queer, and BIPOC leaders who know best what works for their bodies and have been at the forefront in advocating for reproductive justice across history.
BHT stands ready to advance bold policy, encourage voter engagement and work to ensure access to health is available for all.
Background
The repeal of Roe v Wade sets a dangerous precedent for the removal of hard fought for rights for American people, and BHT is appalled that the Supreme Court decision. It should not go unnamed that the system of white supremacy culture stands to benefit from this decision through deepening and perpetuating of inequitable health outcomes across communities.
In our commitment to naming and being critical of how white supremacy culture is influencing our work, it is important to look at the history of abortion access in our county and examine the power dynamics at play.
Before 1840, abortion was widely accessed and largely stigma free in America. Abortions were typically carried out by female midwives, doulas, and Indigenous practitioners familiar with plant and herbal medicine typical for the process at that time.
In 1847, the American Medical Association is established, exclusively for white male doctors. It is this group that begins organizing against abortion, arguing that doctors (who are exclusively men at this time) had the most superior knowledge on health. Making abortion illegal would effectively discredit and cut out midwives and doulas, a female dominated workforce, from the field, and in 1900 their campaign succeeded, and abortion became illegal in all states. This fits the AMA’s pattern of organizing to discredit women and people of color in the medical field, so white men could maintain dominance and power.
During this time, we should note abortion may have been illegal but was still happening. The Guttmacher Institute reports that unsafe, illegal abortion resulted in the death of 2,700 women in 1930, equating to 1 out of every 5 recorded maternal deaths that year. By 1940, the death toll declined to just under 1,700 and by 1950 to just over 300 (likely due to the introduction of antibiotics). In 1965, deaths due to illegal abortions fell to under 200 but still accounted for 17 percent of all maternal deaths that year. These only account for the deaths that were reported, and the number is believed to be much higher.1 It was these death rates that would lead people or organize again in the 60s towards passing Roe v Wade in 1973.
We name this history to note how public opinion on abortion was manipulated by a small group of white men in power, so they could continue to hoard their power, at the expense of human lives. We cannot separate that fact from the impacts of the repeal today, as we look at the expected impacts to come.
When we look at who is most affected by this decision we see:
Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho has reported an influx in patients from our of state seeking reproductive care since abortion related restrictions have taken affect across states, including an increase in patients traveling from Texas since their 2021 statewide ban. Patients’ average distance to the nearest facility would increase by 97 miles, from 25 to 122 miles. Increases in travel distances would likely prevent 93,500 to 143,500 individuals each year from accessing abortion care (Myers, Jones, and Upadhyaya 2019). 43% of abortions provided at Planned Parenthoods Spokane Valley clinic were for patients from Idaho.2 This puts more pressure on our state systems to meet need, affecting access for all Washington patients. Increases in travel distances would likely prevent 93,500 to 143,500 individuals each year from accessing abortion care.
Systemic racism has placed people of color in higher risk conditions leading to unavoidable and unjust racial and ethnic disparities in reproductive or women’s health in Washington state including:
Higher rates of teen pregnancy and infant mortality among American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, and Hispanic populations as compared to Whites.
A 2021 Washington state study found that Black women giving birth were at greater risk of serious illness and complications than White women, even after adjusting for other demographics and hospital type3. (Garg et al, 2021)
We name these to call out the inequity of forcing birth on people of color to give birth in a system currently that refuses to prioritize their safety in the birthing process.
We encourage the BHT community to utilize our prompts for Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppression reflection in decision-making to identify ways to provide support to our community and local providers to ensure safe access to reproductive health.
Prompts for Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppression Reflection in decision making:
How is this decision being influenced by characteristics of white-supremacy culture?
Where are we taking opportunities to disrupt white-supremacy culture in this decision?
How and when have the people who will be impacted by this decision been included in decision
making?
How have we assessed and addressed how difference in identity, environment, or lived
experience may be influencing this decision?
How does this decision help to shift the power away from those who typically have the most?
Where is their opportunity for truth and reconciliation?
How can we embed joy?
What don’t we know?
A note on the evolving equity journey
We have yet to see an anti-racist world, but we believe we can build one. We do not strive for perfection in our equity journey, but an openness to learn and willingness to be moved. We will make mistakes, and those mistakes will help us grow. We strive to build accountability in our work that will prevent and reduce the harm to those who have already been impacted by oppression along the way. We owe so much of our learning to people of color and members of other oppressed groups who have taken on a great burden in sharing their experiences of oppression in order for us to see how we must do better. To that end we do our best to express our commitment as we know how to live it out today in this document, however, our commitment to anti-oppression work is ever evolving and how we communicate and activate our commitment to this work will also evolve and grow.
1 https://www.healthline.com/health-news/the-history-of-abortion-rights-in-the-u-s#The-Decades-Leading-Up-to- Roe-v.-Wade
2 https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/jun/24/state-officials-planned-parenthood-sites-in-easter/ 3