Issue Brief

State Abortion Bans Threaten Nearly 7 Million Black Women, Exacerbate the Existing Black Maternal Mortality Crisis

Analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families and In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda reveals the harmful impact of Dobbs on Black women. We find that more than 6.7 million Black women – 57 percent of all Black women ages 15-49 – live in the 26 states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion.

State Abortion Bans Harm More Than Three Million Disabled Women

State Abortion Bans Harm More Than Three Million Disabled Women

The Dobbs decision has only compounded the longstanding barriers to abortion care that disabled people face, including provider discrimination and lack of training or experience with disabled patients, guardians dictating decisions about their reproductive care, denials of care and assistance among religiously-affiliated service providers and intermediate care facilities, transportation difficulties, inaccessibility in health care facilities, and layers of economic obstacles to affording the costs of care.

What’s the Wage Gap in the States?

What’s the Wage Gap in the States?

Overall, women in the United States are paid 78 cents for every dollar paid to men, and that gap is widest for women of color. This persistent, pervasive wage gap is driven in part by gender and racial discrimination, workplace harassment, job segregation and a lack of workplace policies that support family caregiving, which is still most often performed by women.

Disabled Women and the Wage Gap

Democracy & Abortion Access

In a political landscape that moves the question of abortion access to the states, NPWF demonstrates the connection between the representation of women and women of color in state legislatures and better policy outcomes for those seeking abortions.

Black Women’s Maternal Health

The reproductive health of Black women has long been compromised by interpersonal, institutional, and structural racism. In addition to contending with social and economic drivers of poor health that undermine Black Americans, they have experienced discriminatory health care practices and abuse from slavery to the present.

Rejecting Business as Usual

Black women workers are a critical backbone of the economy. As demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, women were the majority of essential workers who continued to work during the pandemic, providing vital services and sustaining the nation’s economy throughout the public health emergency. Black women disproportionately work in many of these essential roles

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