SOCIAL DISPARITY PROBLEMS FOR ABORTION LAWS AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Author

Yetunde Justina Oni, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

5-1-2025

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Philosophy

First Advisor

Auxier, Randall

Abstract

The discourse on abortion and reproductive rights is not new. Birth control methods are practices as old as ancient civilizations, as they were common in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome (Hull, Hoffer, W. and Hoffer, P. 2004). Modern discourse on the abortion debate has largely bordered on the morality of abortion and the question of granting the fetus personhood and, thus, rights as a human being (Markowitz 1990). However, such considerations do not do justice to the complexities of abortion (Markowitz 1990). Now that the Constitution no longer protects the right to obtain a legal abortion, according to the Dobbs v Jackson Supreme Court ruling in 2022, as was the situation before Roe v. Wade, and reproductive rights are clamped down in many states in the US, the abortion debate once again holds serious weight and implications. Among these are the social disparity problems of the existing abortion laws in the United States and recent abortion restrictions in place in many states, which form an essential framework of this research. I argue that abortion laws cause women, especially women of ethnic and racial minorities; Black women, women of color, women with disabilities, or women with low income, to become even more oppressed, discriminated against, or marginalized. There are a lot of socio-economic implications of abortion laws for women regardless of race, color, or any other social categories. For instance, how does a woman with an unintended pregnancy deal with work-life or career balance? Are the available childcare support plans sufficient to ascertain the woman's and future child's quality of life? These are some of the challenges many women face against the background of restrictive abortion laws. How affordable are healthcare and childcare for single mothers or women who do not have the available resources—as many women are economically disadvantaged or dependent on men? The state's interest should be in who bears the burden, not morality, since, in my view, borrowing from the liberal position—opponents of legal moralism —that rules out the justification of restricting people’s liberty based on moral acts except to prevent injustice (George 1990, 1427), the law does not establish the morality or immorality of a practice. The law should articulate and protect civil rights and its universal correlate, human rights. Rights themselves are morally important, but the law does not establish or create these rights; they are rights with or without the law. Ever since abortion became constitutionally legal in 1973 before it was overturned in 2022, there were restrictions on the use of federal funds for most abortions by the 1976 Hyde Amendment (in addition to state restrictions), backed by the Supreme Court, which denied abortion or ensured a longer waiting period, where the burden of not obtaining an abortion was determined not to be undue, in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey Supreme Court decision in 1992, regardless of the circumstances. This decision made abortion rights under Roe v. Wade a meaningless abstraction for countless women who could not afford an abortion or incur additional expenses for the procedure (Baer 2002; McDonagh 1996). The state’s interest is solely based on determining the presence of life in the womb from conception (Henderson 2014). Thus, abortion is often viewed as inherently immoral (Kaczor 2011). Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion was formulated, policies on abortion have not been legally treated as an issue of women’s equality or the lack of it (Siegel 1995). Therefore, critics and feminists alike have tried to situate abortion laws within the context of sex equality to remedy this oppression (Siegel 1995). Feminists acknowledge that rights are applicable in some situations based on gender (Markowitz 1990). This research aims to establish that the denial of abortion rights translates to an issue of sexual inequality, which in turn creates or reinforces social disparity problems for women.Keywords: Abortion, Reproductive Rights, Sexual (In)Equality, Social Disparity Problems