Restoring public funding for abortion: A public health and social justice imperative

Federal funding for abortion has been prohibited by Congress since 1976, and a majority of the states followed suit. As a consequence, each year, tens of thousands of women – those who are low-income and poor, immigrants, Native Americans, women in federal prison and in the military are denied the right to make their own childbearing decisions. Recent efforts in Congress to broaden economic barriers to abortion through the Stupak and Nelson-Hatch-Casey Amendments would, if passed, create barriers to abortion access to millions more women.

Funding restrictions have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable women, and disproportionately on women of color. Restrictions compromise women's health by causing delays in obtaining an abortion, forcing some women to use less safe and illegal methods, to continue unwanted pregnancies, to sacrifice other basic needs in order to pay for an abortion. Further, these bans re-enforce stigma and fuel the virulent, and sometimes violent hostility to abortion.

In the recent debate over healthcare reform, opponents of abortion successfully excluded abortion care from basic health coverage. The attempt at a compromise in favor of the status quo codifies the inequality and discrimination against vulnerable women. In this session we will chart the history of funding restrictions. We will also show that taking a broad reproductive and social justice approach, grounded in women's stories, is the most effective way to push for universal healthcare coverage that includes abortion and the full spectrum of reproductive health services and hence redress decades of non-existent and unequal treatment.