Mississippi: Is Roe v. Wade Needed if Women Can Have It All?

The case that began at the end of Roe v. Wade contains a novel argument: The right to abortion is no longer necessary because it has become much easier for women to combine work and family.

In Roe, the Supreme Court said unwanted pregnancy could lead women to “an excruciating life and future,” and in one case, Casey v the nation’s social life. “

On Wednesday, the court hears a Mississippi case about a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks. In a brief to the court, state lawyers argued that the “march of progress” had thwarted these ideas about women’s lives.

“Over the past 50 years,” said Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, “women have found their own ways to better balance success in their professional and personal lives.”

Mississippi makes other arguments that are likely to be more crucial in the case, including the fact that abortion law should be a matter of state and that advances in science allow fetuses to survive outside the uterus earlier. The dispute over economic opportunities however, it is novel because it focuses on the effects on women.

“The argument is, you can have it all,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at Florida State University College of Law. “They say it isn’t necessary because there are people like Amy Coney Barrett. Women can have large families and prosperous careers and do not have to choose. ”(Justice Barrett, who joined the court under President Trump last year, has seven children.)

The argument serves a different legal purpose, she said: If the need for abortion rights is “obsolete for decades,” as the state’s brief says, there is a reason to overturn precedents.

More extensive social and political research tells a more complex story. While women are more educated than men, are increasingly becoming the main breadwinners, and have made significant advances in public and professional life, motherhood still has a significant economic impact. An abortion is also denied. Poor women are hardest hit by abortion restrictions – for whom it is also the most difficult to reconcile paid work and child-rearing.

Public order

In their argument, the Mississippi attorneys wrote that “numerous laws passed since Roe – against pregnancy discrimination, vacation entitlement, childcare assistance, and more – make it easier for women to both be successful professionally and have rich family lives. “

These guidelines do not exist or are weak, federally or in Mississippi.

The distinctive feature of the United States is that it does not have paid national vacation – it is one of six countries in the world and the only rich country without it. It provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave, but almost half of workers are not entitled to it, and many more cannot afford to take unpaid leave. Some states have paid family vacations, but Mississippi does not.

When it comes to childcare, the United States once again stands out. While rich countries spend an average of $ 14,000 a year on childcare allowances for young children, most families in the United States receive hundreds of dollars in tax credit. Childcare is unaffordable for nearly half of American families, according to the Treasury Department and 71 percent of Mississippi families. Democrats are currently considering billing for four weeks of paid vacation, subsidized childcare for most families, and universal pre-K.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 states that employers cannot treat pregnant women differently, and a 2015 Supreme Court ruling required them to make provisions for pregnant women in certain circumstances. But state protection is weak in many cases, and a comprehensive analysis of complaints to the Equal Opportunities Commission for Employment and survey data this year found that pregnancy discrimination remains widespread.

Anti-abortion scientists made another point: there could be more public policies to support mothers if there weren’t any strict abortion rights. Without Roe, they said, the differences between the reproductive lives of women and men could be more recognized and more action could be taken to account for pregnancy and child-rearing.

Correlation or Causality?

Another argument from Mississippi and those who support the state’s case is that there is no way to demonstrate a causal link between the right to abortion and women’s ability to play an equal role in society.

“One can anecdotally claim that the abortion of a certain woman seemed to preserve her chance for a certain job or a certain qualification,” wrote 240 scientists and members of anti-abortion groups in a brief to the court. “But it is impossible to argue that access to abortion is specifically responsible for the advances American women have made.”

A group of 154 economists also wrote to the court, saying the notion that children no longer affect women’s development is “premature and wrong”. In addition, the group said, sophisticated economic methods have demonstrated causal effects of access to abortion. Researchers were able to compare similar people who were either unable or unable to get an abortion due to a policy change, as described by Caitlin Knowles Myers, Middlebury economist and author of the letter.

For example, studies have shown that access to abortion for young women with unplanned pregnancies resulted in higher incomes, more education, and a higher chance of a professional or managerial position than for women denied access to an abortion. The effects were greatest in black women.

Understand the momentous concept of the Supreme Court

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Mississippi Abortion Act. The court heard arguments in a challenge to a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks. The case could lead to the end of Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

New York Gun Act. The judges will examine the constitutionality of a long-standing New York law that severely restricts the carrying of guns in public. The court has not issued a major ruling under the second amendment in more than a decade.

A decline in public support. Chief Justice Roberts now heads a court that is increasingly being associated with partiality. Recent polls show that following a spate of unusual late summer judgments in politically charged cases, the court is suffering a sharp drop in public support.

One of the best known examples of the effect of abortion access is the Turnaway Study. It included women who went to 30 clinics in 21 states and compared those who were just below or above the gestational line for an abortion. In the follow-up research, the scientists sifted through their credit reports for several years before and after the unwanted pregnancy. Denial of abortion increased the likelihood that women lived in poverty, were unemployed, had overdue debts, or experienced bankruptcies or evictions.

“Refusing an abortion has long-term economic implications,” said Diana Greene Foster, a demographer at the University of California at San Francisco who led the study. “The best thing I have learned from my studies is that they make rational decisions that take their circumstances into account. If somehow magically every pregnancy was supported and all lives were rosy, people would take that into account. Instead, people look at their circumstances and think that things are going to be really difficult. And all that they think is right because we see these results in people who are denied abortions. “

Other recent research has found that having a child continues to affect women’s economic outcomes. Worldwide, the gender pay and promotion gaps increase with the birth of children. In the United States, women have 20 to 25 percentage points lower than men in employment when they have children and 35 percentage points in income, according to Henrik Kleven, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton.

“We have so much evidence that the effects of parenting are very unequal for men and women,” he said. “There is still some gender inequality, on average, between men and women without children, but the effects of parenting alone explain most of it.”

The falling abortion rate

A third argument that supports the idea that access to abortion is unnecessary is that the expansion of women’s rights came before Roe and women’s progress has continued even though abortion rates have fallen.

“Women’s motivation, determination, and talent, as well as state laws that support it, have led to the rise of women in society, not abortion,” said Teresa Stanton Collett, professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and one of the authors. of the anti-abortion letter.

Those who advocate the right to abortion say women plan their education and careers knowing that there will be access to abortion if they need it. This is an argument known as trust – that people make decisions based on existing rules.

The court used it in the Casey v. Planned Parenthood: “For two decades of economic and social development, people have organized intimate relationships and made decisions that define their views about themselves and their place in society, trusting the availability of abortion in society in the event that that contraception should fail. “

Regardless of the court’s ruling on Mississippi law, the case, along with other recent state restrictions on abortion, has cast doubt on whether women can still make plans based on that trust, Professor Ziegler said.

“Mississippi is trying to redefine whether they can reasonably do this,” she said. “It’s a combination of saying that women don’t need this anymore, and even if they do, they can’t reasonably expect it to be there.”