We are watching, in real time, the undoing of a century’s worth of progress. Nowadays, I stew over the continuous affronts on women, executive order after executive order. In a reflection of these changes, the contents of the annual Human Rights Report have slimmed this year, no longer covering the vast sub-categories on rape and domestic violence, reproductive rights, female genital mutilation, and discrimination against women.
The repercussions of dismantling protective policies and freezing funds are felt by multiple communities, not just women. Similarly, less space is being devoted to LGBTQ+ individuals, Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, and even issues like government corruption in the Human Rights Report. Already, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been shuttered, foiling the global HIV/AIDS effort and hurting humanitarian relief in war-torn countries such as Ukraine.
Of the multitude of hollowed-out agencies, I want to highlight the several that can have the unintended consequence of pulling women out of the workforce and higher education. While it started with the Roe v. Wade overturn, the devastation to women is ongoing. Most recently, the Trump administration suspended over 35 million dollars in federal funding from Title X, a family-planning program first enacted in 1970 as a bipartisan bill. This program provided expansive, essential reproductive care to millions of lower-income, underinsured individuals. How is this profoundly damaging to women? One in 3 women who live in highly restrictive or full-ban abortion states are less and less able to dictate the timing and size of their families. Unfortunately, the same can now be said for women whose primary source of affordable reproductive and sexual health services and access to providers is through Title X-backed health centers, such as Planned Parenthood.
I have grown acutely aware that people have a narrow concept of “reproductive health,” believing that abortions constitute the majority of what it entails. This is an unfounded and inaccurate representation of clinics that provide contraceptive counseling and provision, breast and cervical cancer screenings, STI/STD testing and treatment, basic infertility treatment, pregnancy testing, and preconception services 97% of the time. This absolutely encompasses maternal, fetal, and infant health.
When a woman is confronted with an unplanned pregnancy in a punitive state, deprived of funds, her options become finite, leaving her life upended. This is a burden specifically weighing down on women aiming for educational attainment, and it often makes the long-term difference between a poverty-level income wage and a higher-income salary that secures lasting financial stability.
Let’s not forget the providers of services that realize our reproductive rights, who deliver countless life-saving procedures outside of abortions. The medical practices of obstetrician gynecologists, physician associates, nurse practitioners, and midwives are increasingly restricted and criminalized. In some cases, licenses are revoked, and doctors are sentenced for necessary medical interventions performed under ambiguous laws. This provokes the current shortage we see of OB/GYNs and labor unit closures. And I don’t blame medical students who are cautious of applying to this residency specialty in our post-Dobbs world. Additionally, these fields are popular among women. This is just one example of women of high achievement being forced to resign.
While abortion laws are state-specific, family planning and counseling services funds are being sheared across the country. Title X physicians, clinics, and services will remain implemented as long as federal grants from the Department of Health and Human Services are disbursed. The potential withholding of Title X funds will lead to proportional reductions in cancer screenings, increased rate of STI/STD transmissions, and worsening maternal health outcomes. The cascade of harm set in motion by tightening budgets threatens women’s lives and encroaches upon providers’ duty of care.
You may not support elective or even medically necessary abortions, yet at some point, you will personally know a woman that sustains these ideologically-driven executive order barrages. It could be her struggling to access some form of contraceptive, receive IVF treatment, or access other basic reproductive support. Those people who provide abortion care are the same people providing other reproductive healthcare.
It could very well be a peer at BC who relies on her birth control prescription from Planned Parenthood to keep her PCOS symptoms at bay. It could be that a classmate needed mifepristone, obtained from a Title X healthcare organization, to stay in school. There are medical services not covered by BC health insurance, so chances are female BC students look to Planned Parenthood affiliates for confidential and covered contraceptive methods or procedures.
Let it not be lost on us how tied health outcomes and reproductive care policies are to women’s futures. As college students in Boston, we are lucky that our rights are protected under the Massachusetts State Constitution. It is only when every woman is entitled to making timely and fully informed decisions that we will truly embrace women as creators of life inside and outside of the womb.
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