Mistry 1 Aanshi Mistry Professor Cathryn Lavery CRJ 150 July 10, 2022 Policy Paper: Roe Vs Wade In this policy paper, we will discuss regarding the controversial decision of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe Vs Wade. Our main point of discussion would be regarding its consequences and impacts this overturning have caused in a community development environment. Our main focus for this analysis would be regarding what this decision would mean for people on probation and parole. Roe Vs Wade, a legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, ruled that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the Court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman’s constitutional right of privacy, which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case began in 1970 when “Jane Roe”—a fictional name used to protect the identity of the plaintiff, Norma McCorvey instituted federal action against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas county, Texas, where Roe resided. The Supreme Court disagreed with Roe’s assertion of an absolute right to terminate pregnancy in any way and at any time and attempted to balance a woman’s right of privacy with a state’s interest in regulating abortion. In his opinion, Blackmun noted that only a “compelling state interest” justifies regulations limiting fundamental rights such as privacy and that legislators must therefore draw statutes narrowly to express only the legitimate state interests at stake. The Court then attempted to balance the state’s distinct compelling interests in the health of pregnant women and in the potential life of fetuses. It placed the point after which a state’s compelling interest in the pregnant woman’s health would allow it to regulate abortion at approximately the end of the first trimester of pregnancy. With regard to the fetus, the Court located that point at capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb, or viability, which occurs at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. This decision made in 1973 was challenged repeatedly over time, which resulted in narrowing down the scope of this decision. In “Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania Vs Casey” (1992), the Supreme Court established that restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional if they place an undue burden on a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus is viable. In “Gonzales Vs Carhart” (2007), the Court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (2003), which prohibited a rarely used abortion procedure known as intact dilation and evacuation. In “Whole Woman’s Health Vs Hellerstedt” (2016), the Court invoked its decision in Casey to strike down two provisions of a Texas law requiring abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centres and abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Four years later, in June “Medical Services L.L.C. Vs Russo” (2020), the Court invoked Whole Woman’s Health to declare unconstitutional a Louisiana statute that was, as the majority noted, nearly identical to Texas’s admitting-privileges law. These amendments were already made to this decision, until it was overturned completely on June 24, 2022. Mistry 2 With Roe Vs Wade overturned, abortion is still legal in much of the US, but individual states are now free to make abortion illegal. What it does, however, is remove the legal shield that had prevented states from making abortion illegal. Without Roe Vs Wade, an individual’s ability to access abortion depends on the state where they live. Some 40 million women of child-bearing age will live in states where abortion will become more difficult to access, according to the Guttmacher Institute. About 630,000 abortions were performed in the US in 2019 alone, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), although Guttmacher’s own research indicates it may be closer to 860,000. The CDC says that the vast majority of abortions, 92.8%, are performed during the first trimester. Most people who get abortions are unmarried, although they may be living with a partner at the time. About one in 10 women who get an abortion are teenagers, with most being in their 20s. About 60% of people who get abortions have also given birth before, and nearly 60% had never had an abortion before. In a research paper “From Human Rights to Right to be Human..”, “The problematic of (human) needs is acutely disturbing for the received models of human rights thought and action. It often gets translated into a conflict between ‘bread’ and ‘freedom’; freedom usually wins with the liberal conceptions of rights, despite the awareness that without ‘bread’, freedom of speech and assembly, of association, of conscience and religion, of political participation-even though symbolic adult suffrage-may be existentially meaningless for the ‘victims’.” But the issues here are not really of bread and/or freedom in the abstract, but rather who has how much of each, for how long, at what cost to others, and why. Some people have both bread and freedom; others have freedom but little bread or none at all, yet others have half a loaf with or without freedom, and still others have a precarious mix where bread is assured if certain freedoms are bartered. I felt this argument was worth mentioning as it gives rise to a very critical reflection in our life as a human being. The problem of basic rights, especially human rights, in situations of mass poverty, is according to him, one of redistribution i.e. access and needs. In other words, it is a problem of development, a process of planned social change through the continuous exercise of public power. With several states preparing to criminalize abortion now that Roe Vs Wade is over, and some states talking about criminalizing traveling out of state to get an abortion, it’s worth remembering that for many people on probation and parole, traveling out of state for abortion care is already next to impossible. On any given day in the U.S., 666,413 women are on probation, a community-based alternative to incarceration or parole, the part of a prison sentence that someone serves in the community. In many jurisdictions — for instance, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Idaho, Texas, and the federal system, as well as some juvenile probation systems — it’s common for people on probation and parole to face restrictions on where they can travel, whether they can move to another county or state, and with whom they can associate. All of these restrictions will make it harder for people under supervision to get abortion care. Since this overturning decision by the Supreme Court, many news outlets have reported on how people in prison can be blocked from seeking an abortion, especially in states where abortion is already illegal. The end of Roe Vs Wade will create new barriers to abortion care for incarcerated people, since it will likely trigger the criminalization of abortion in thirteen states. But an even greater number of people on probation and parole stand to be affected. About 231,000 women are in prison or jail on any given day, but several times as many women are on Mistry 3 probation and parole, the result of gendered differences in offense types, women are more likely than men to be serving sentences for lower-level property and drug crimes. In the thirteen states with abortion ban “trigger laws” on the way, more than 200,000 women are under probation and parole supervision, which will make it difficult or impossible for many of them to travel out of state for an abortion, or potentially even talk to people coordinating abortion care, given the typical restrictions of probation and parole. Nationwide, the average probation term is just under two years — far too long for the average individual to “wait it out” until they are no longer under supervision and can seek abortion care across state lines. Meanwhile, parole sentences can be several months to years — typically, up to the remaining time on an individual’s sentence after they are released from prison. Some people are even subject to lifetime supervision, depending on the state and the underlying offense. People on probation and parole typically have some options for interstate travel, but they have to get formal approval from their supervision officer in order to make specific trips. With the sole authority to approve or deny a trip across state lines for abortion care, a probation or parole officer might choose to prioritize their own personal beliefs about abortion over the desires of the individual under their control. They might also choose to delay the decision until it’s no longer possible or safe for the individual they’re supervising to terminate a pregnancy. From a community stand point, these restrictions on travel are not the only barriers that might stop someone from getting, or seeking, an abortion. People on probation and parole have low average incomes, and they are often under-insured. Going to prison usually results in losing one’s health insurance coverage, meaning that formerly incarcerated people face an uphill battle to regain health insurance after their release. They may also struggle to get the time off work necessary to have an abortion, especially since maintaining steady employment is often itself a condition of supervision. In my opinion, the growing criminalization of abortion won’t impact everyone equally. The abortions that these new laws prevent will disproportionately be among people who are poor and lack access to transportation across state lines. People on probation and parole are a key segment of this demographic. Far too many individuals, having been swept into the criminal legal system by laws that criminalize poverty, will now find themselves without recourse for accessing what should be basic healthcare. In conclusion, there are not many recommendations we can give currently, however, we can hope that the government takes action on such decision, and find the most optimum solution for this situation, which would help the citizens of the USA pursue their basic right for abortion. Mistry 4 References Baxi, Upendra. “From Human Rights to the Right to Be Human: Some Heresies.” India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 3/4, 1986, pp. 185–200. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23001445. “Roe v. Wade Overturned: Our Latest Resources.” Guttmacher Institute, 11 July 2022, https://www.guttmacher.org/abortion-rights-supreme-court. Bertram, Wanda, and Wendy Sawyer. “What the End of Roe v. Wade Will Mean for People on Probation and Parole.” Prison Policy Initiative, 30 June 2022, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/06/30/roe/. U.S. Supreme Court. “Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.” West's Supreme Court reporter vol. 112 (1992): 2791-885. “After Gonzales v. Carhart : The Future of Abortion Jurisprudence.” Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, Pew Research Center, 30 May 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2007/06/14/after-gonzales-v-carhart-the-future-ofabortion-jurisprudence/. “Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt.” Center for Reproductive Rights, 19 Jan. 2022, https://reproductiverights.org/case/whole-womans-health-v-hellerstedt/.
