Does Dobbs Matter? When Do We Know the Laws of the Fourth Amendment? The Case Against Abortion in the United States
Never before in the lifetimes of most people alive today have medical choices been so constrained and so obscenely scrutinized, with harms especially to women in the southern United States, where abortion access is most limited, and to poor women and women of color whose maternal and infant health care access is less and who face greater risks associated with childbirth.
So when someone tells you abortion doesn’t matter to voters, don’t listen. But how much it matters – and whether that’s enough to make wins for abortion rights possible in states well beyond Michigan and Kentucky – is a tougher question. That’s because the Supreme Court doesn’t get the last word on what Dobbs means. That’s up to the rest of us.
Perhaps the biggest wild card is Dobbs itself. The draft leaked from the court prior to the Supreme Court reversing the decision on June 5, and the decision wasn’t what the court said. What we don’t know is what Dobbs will mean in the lives of Americans.
Midterm voters were certainly reacting to what the Supreme Court did. There is no real precedent for the court to destroy what was long recognized as a constitutional right – much less to do so in a way that was mocking and dismissive. Justice Samuel Alito observed in his opinion that half of the electorate was female. If people didn’t like what the court had done, he suggested, they could just go out and vote. Last night, voters certainly took Alito’s advice.
Lawmakers are being pressured to consider legislation that would punish pregnant patients for going for an abortion. More than one anti-abortion group has floated the idea of preventing travel for abortion – either by allowing people to sue anyone who travels out of state, using the model developed under Texas’s SB8 – or applying a red state’s criminal abortion law to anyone who helps a person from that state get an abortion, even if that procedure was perfectly legal where it took place.
Some state lawmakers want to go further. In Texas, legislators have threatened CEOs with felony charges if their employees travel out of state for abortion. The Idaho Republican platform includes no exceptions for abortion at all.
And those are just the concrete consequences. But Americans’ reactions to Roe v. Wade over the past five decades were about much more than what the Supreme Court said in 1973. For a wide variety of movements and individual Americans, abortion became synonymous with equality for women, judicial overreaching, or reproductive justice.
Why Did Michigan Gov. Whitmer Run Away from the Covid-19 Red Wave? The Case of Abortion, Child Care, and Parental Leave
Editor’s Note: Reshma Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code and the Marshall Plan for Moms. She is the author of Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work. The views expressed here are hers. Read more opinion on CNN.
A few months ago – as economic concerns reached a fever pitch and pundits began to forecast a looming “red wave” – Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer put a stake in the ground.
“We have this tendency to say, Covid-19 was a she-cession… we’ve got to get women back in the workplace,’” the governor explained. “But you know how you do that? You allow women to do things. Our ability to make the most important economic decisions in our lives is not taken away from us.
In the months after, commentators and pollsters speculated about whether abortion or the economy would be more important to voters than other issues. Indeed, Republicans rejoiced – and Democrats despaired – in seeing both the Dow and the abortion decision backlash dip earlier this fall.
Not many people made that case as compelling asWhitmer, which did not include child care, parental leave or health care. I believe that those who won, even if they weren’t up against candidates who couldn’t run on these issues, got lucky because many of them had forced women to have children and failed to take steps to protect them. When it came time to vote on abortion, voters in five states where it was on the ballot voted to support it every time.
A number of politicians have proved this, including Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan who won a toss-up race after linking abortion restrictions and labor shortages, and Rep.Katie Porter of California who emphasized reproductive freedom for economic security.
Candidates on both sides of the political aisle were correct in campaigning on important economic issues like inflation and gas prices. Though, as both economists (and apparently, voters) noted, the Republican Party lacked a real plan to address them. As parents, inflation and gas prices affect us more than anyone, and we find ourselves wanting to charge more for things like haircuts and soccer cleats.
But there are additional costs killing parents’ budgets every day. The price of child care is increasing at a higher rate than inflation. 40% of parents going into debt will do so before their child has moved into a dorm, as it is now commonplace for pre- school to cost more than an in-state university degree.
Exploding health care costs, too, are responsible for two-thirds of all bankruptcies, with American hospital prices 60% more than they are in other countries. 120 other countries have paid parental leave programs, but who does not? We compare ourselves to most of the world, but who does not?
Black women are especially at risk of missing out on the fundamental financial issue for parents, whether or not to become one in the first place. The cost of raising a child is almost two times as much as it was before the Dobbs decision overturns, according to an analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While higher gas prices might hurt, they pale in comparison to the cost of caring for a child the Supreme Court forced you to have.
Not to mention, the issues Republicans did campaign on – banning books, eliminating some sex education and taking away transgender people’s access to health care – are deeply unpopular to us. Indeed, for all the time the GOP spent manufacturing culture wars, none of these so-called “parental rights” issues cracked the top 10 for voters going into the midterms, according to Gallup.
But Democrats can’t count on Republicans to make the same mistake twice. Over the next two years, they must convey to voters that reproductive freedom is economic freedom – and they can start by legislating that way.
The Democrats were given a second chance in the election, and many took it, including putting paid leave back on the table, trying to lower the cost of child care, and codifying women’s rights. These policies would ease parents’ financial stresses far more than Republican corporate tax breaks ever could – and history shows that if candidates articulate the value of these policies, their numbers may in fact improve.
These candidates offer a blueprint for a better nation – and, looking ahead to 2024, Democrats would be wise to take them and their strategy seriously. They’ve shown us a future where leaders talk about these policies as the pocketbook issues they are and prove they can pass them on behalf of the people.
Most importantly, it’s a world in which parents across the political spectrum can be sure that the party they elected is, finally, giving us a chance, too.
Editorial: Work-family policies for women and girls in the 21st century: Status of the PUMP Act, the Women’s Fairness Act, and Related Issues
Editor’s Note: Vicki Shabo is a senior fellow at New America, a think tank in Washington, DC, where she focuses on paid family and medical leave and other work-family policies that advance gender, racial and economic equity. She has testified before Congress multiple times on women’s workforce participation and earnings. The views expressed here are hers. CNN has more opinion.
There is need for much more. Policymakers should begin 2023 by examining how public investing can better support families and those who work for them.
The health, care and economic challenges triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. The racial justice wake up call shone a bright light on systemic bias that denies full economic opportunity and fair treatment to people of color. There are many worker strikes and labor actions. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, constraining women’s reproductive health decisions.
The questions about power, the role of government and the need to re-balance what is public and private to maximize opportunities for families and the strength of the economy are raised. Now, as Congress heads home for the holidays, there’s progress.
After years of work, as part of the end-of-year omnibus package, lawmakers just passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a measure to allow pregnant people the ability to request reasonable accommodations like carrying a water bottle, or sitting rather than standing, to protect their health and the health of their pregnancies – a right other people with temporary physical limitations have had for years.
Before the passage of the PUMP Act, an estimated 13 million women of working age were excluded from current nursing mothers provisions because there were other gaps in current law.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/opinions/spending-bill-pregnant-workers-shabo/index.html
End-of-Year Omnibus Spending and Children’s Care: Implications for Families, Children, and Home- and Community-Based Care
Both measures were adopted as amendments to the $1.7 trillion end-of-year omnibus spending bill which passed in the Senate Thursday. It now goes to the floor of the House Friday ahead of a midnight deadline.
Families are mostly left to find child care or care for older and disabled loved ones on their own, and this affects caregivers – mostly women’s – ability to work. Instability and uncertainty are created in the care workforce by professional caregivers being paid less than they are worth.
While tax credits for families with children are only available once per year, the challenges of buying clothes and shoes for kids, paying for band uniforms and even putting food at the table are not helped by the fact that tax credits are only available once per year.
The reality that families’ work and care challenges are considered private comes on the heels of Dobbs, which paradoxically made private decisions about abortion and child-bearing matters of heightened public debate, after nearly 50 years of case law protecting reproductive health choices as part of all Americans’ constitutional right to privacy.
Congress’ end-of-year omnibus spending package might help a bit. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act will be helpful to millions of people who are pregnant or nursing in the workforce. This is literally the least Congress can do to support healthy pregnancies and babies. Increased spending for Child Care Block Development Grants and Head Start will help to shore up the existing child care system.
But significant work was left undone in this Congress. The omnibus package failed to re-establish CTC enhancements that helped so many families during the pandemic, despite valiant efforts by advocates and congressional champions. Earlier policy fights this year failed to result in the transformational investments in paid family and medical leave, child care and home- and community-based care that President Biden proposed and that the House of Representatives passed in November 2021 in the Build Back Better Act.
The most recent Congress has done lots of important things that show the federal government can do good, which might provide hope for the future.
The Democrats’ American Rescue Plan included temporary investments to shore up child care and home care providers, reduce care-related costs for families, and provide families with more money and more flexibility through the advanced, enhanced CTC. Infrastructure legislation decades in the making and passed with bipartisan support invested in roads, bridges, technology and more because physical infrastructure – unlike care infrastructure – is seen as a public good.
And Democrats in Congress also made historic investments this year in health care and clean energy and some adjustments to make the tax code more fair in the Inflation Reduction Act. Earlier this month, Congress also passed a law protecting the right of LGBTQ people to marry and did so on a bipartisan basis, something that would have been unthinkable even a couple of years ago.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/opinions/spending-bill-pregnant-workers-shabo/index.html
The free market family: a path for libertarians and conservative ideologues of the political and economic systems of today and tomorrow
So perhaps there is a path forward. The term the University of North Carolina law professor used was called the free market family. The idea that family care and family support are personal or private matters, or subject to individual-level negotiations with employers, is an idea long perpetuated by the private sector, wealthy libertarians and conservative ideologues.
After nearly three years of uncertainty for families due to the pandemic, and a fall season that saw a record number of parents out of the workforce because of care needs or illness, an increase in families’ economic hardships earlier this year after historic reductions, we should celebrate victories for pregnant and nursing workers.