If the Roe v. Wade decision, which legalised abortion in 1973, is overturned, as the recently leaked draught Supreme Court majority opinion suggests, experts anticipate that the repercussions will be felt for years to come in the ongoing discussion.
There will be significant legislative struggles in the future around the removal of a woman’s autonomy over her body.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Michele Bratcher Goodwin, Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, recently took part in a roundtable discussion about the extensive effects of making abortion once more illegal.
According to Professor Goodwin, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’s main worries was how the repeal of Roe V. Wade will affect American democracy, particularly voting rights, basic liberties, and privacy.
She claimed that the Vice President is worried about a variety of concerns.
Given the glaring rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, Prof. Goodwin, who is also the head of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy, stated that there are “serious concerns” about how eviscerating abortion rights may negatively affect women in the United States.
She stated that the current situation has a significant impact on low-income women, particularly those who reside in areas with virtually no access to healthcare facilities.
“Black women already have a 3.5-fold increased risk of maternal death in the US compared to white women. Prof. Goodwin, who is also the author of “Policing the Womb: Indivisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood,” noted that Black women in Mississippi have a pregnancy to the term 118 times more often than they do an abortion.
She claimed that Vice President Harris spoke about worries regarding LGBTQ populations, the deterioration of fundamental safeguards about homosexual marriage and starting families, as well as the loss of privacy protections that may harm parental privacy.
Other topics up for debate included potential negative effects on access to abortion, effects on democracy, in vitro fertilisation (IVF), criminalization, and civil penalties. They also discussed interstate issues, such as states trying to outlaw travelling outside of their borders to end pregnancies, and worries about the use of technology to follow women and girls.
The Roe v. Wade ban has been compared by some experts to other potential rights violations, including the right to marry the person you love, access to contraception and abortion drugs, and access to personal information.
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From a legal standpoint, according to Goodwin, the Supreme Court has established the parameters of privacy by the state for more than 80 years that reproductive autonomy is a fundamental human right. She said that the Court had discussed privacy in instances involving interracial marriage, gay marriage, contraception, and abortion.
She added, “If the Court considers that privacy is no longer a viable basis, then all the areas in which the Court has maintained rights through a privacy framework become susceptible.
