Activists are committed to fighting to ensure that Black women are protected after the latest battle in Texas in the war against abortions.
For background, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued guidance around what is legal under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) of 1986. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said, “Under the law, no matter where you live, women have the right to emergency care — including abortion care.”
Last month, doctors in Texas denied a woman abortion care even though she was suffering from complications with her pregnancy and fetus. This issue went to the courts after she was forced to travel to another state to have an abortion. The state argued “that this guidance amounts to illegal coercion by the Biden administration, forcing doctors and hospitals into providing abortions.”
After the “Texas Supreme Court ruled against a woman seeking an emergency abortion who fled the state to receive the procedure,” in December of 2023 a federal court agreed. On January 2, 2024 the Fifth Circuit of Appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling in Texas v. Becerra, meaning that the EMTALA guidance is not the prevailing law in Texas.
In the opinion, Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote: “We agree with the district court that EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child especially when EMTALA imposes equal stabilization obligations.”
But why is this decision particularly harmful for Black women? Because “Black women are more likely than other racial groups to experience maternal health complications throughout the course of their pregnancies,” the Texas Tribune reports.
Interestingly enough as Dr. Kelly Treder has pointed out, “[a]bortion is the only part of healthcare that is regulated like this, by the state and by the federal government.”
Organizations like Planned Parenthood Federation of America are not taking this news lightly. Alexis McGill Johnson, President & CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, provided the following statement to ESSENCE. “Anti-abortion politicians’ bid for control over our bodies clearly knows no bounds. It’s a travesty that the state of Texas is fighting for permission to put the health and life of pregnant people who need emergency abortion care at risk.”
“Abortion bans make pregnancy more dangerous because they prevent people from getting meaningful access to the health care they may need. Particularly in a state like Texas, where maternal health outcomes are dismal year over year for Black and Brown women, it is shameful that the courts are giving way to them worsening,” continued Johnson.
“We must continue to center Black communities and their local leaders in our work to expand sexual and reproductive health care access, close these abysmal gaps in our medical systems, and push back on these harmful policies. As this ruling makes clear, lives are on the line,” the statement concluded.
And abortion rights are sure to stay in the spotlight, especially this election year. In June, the Supreme Court is expected to release a decision “on whether or not to restrict access to medication abortion” around the “pill mifepristone.”
