The representation gap – even more significant for women of color – poses a huge barrier to ensuring policies that support state-level abortion access

WASHINGTON, D.C. – November 28, 2023 – In a newly released report, Democracy & Abortion Access: State Legislatures’ Lack of Representation Threatens Freedoms, the National Partnership for Women & Families documents the connection between states with harsh abortion restrictions and the under-representation of women in their state legislatures. The report finds that states with a higher percentage of women legislators are more likely to adopt policies that provide abortion protections than states with a lower percentage of women legislators.

Other findings include:

• Of the 24 states and DC where women make up more than a third of the state legislature, 84% have policies that support abortion access
• Of the 26 states where women make up one-third or less of the state legislature, only 15% have policies that support abortion access
• States where women of color make up 10 percent or less of the legislature are 2.5 times more likely to have restrictive abortion policies than other states
• Of the states with a large women of color representation gap (over 10 percentage points), two-thirds are states that are the most restrictive when it comes to abortion access

“We must puncture the myth behind the Supreme Court’s bogus claim that women can be denied their individual freedoms because they can exercise electoral and political power to protect abortion access at the state level,” said Jocelyn Frye, President of the National Partnership for Women & Families. “The vast majority of state legislatures are majority male, regardless of the gender breakdown in the state population. Many states have a long and shameful history of suppressing women’s voices, most especially the voices of Black women. It is not an accident that the states which are the most restrictive when it comes to curbing abortion rights are the same places which go to greatest lengths to suppress and disenfranchise voters. Our report shows why gender representation within state legislatures and advancing reproductive justice are inextricably linked.”

The report found that in Mississippi, the state whose abortion ban led to the Dobbs decision, women make up only 14.4 percent of the state legislature and women of color a mere 6.3 percent, despite being 52.3 percent and 22.8 percent respectively of the state’s adult population. Mississippi also ranks as the second most difficult state to vote in, with an extensive list of anti-voter programs and discriminatory voting laws.

Twenty-one states have implemented abortion bans or restrictions since the Dobbs decision, leaving more than 36 million women living in states where they lack the freedom to make the most basic decisions about if and when to have a child. Black and Native American women are the most likely to live in these states, as are disabled women and those who are economically insecure. 6.7 million Latinas are living in states that have or are likely to ban abortion, making them the largest group of women of color impacted by abortion bans.

This report is the first in a series on Democracy and Abortion Access. The full report can be found here.

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