By Nysa Gandhi, Ryan Greathouse, and Ellen Salovaara
Not all pregnant people identify as women. As students at RPCS, we want to acknowledge and be considerate of this fact.
The Texas Heartbeat Act will impact women attempting to get abortions because the act prevents most abortions from occurring. Under the bill, abortions are not permitted after six weeks or after the first heartbeat is heard. This law does not make exceptions for rape victims or for cases of incest. In addition, any physicians or doctors who knowingly perform an abortion and any individuals who aid someone attempting to get an abortion are liable and can be sued, which is unique to this act, as individual citizens can sue or suspect other citizens of aiding a person trying to get an abortion. This is effectively an absolute ban on abortions as many people do not realize that they are pregnant until after six weeks, so it would be too late for them to access abortions in Texas.
Currently, the abortion bill is only in place in Texas - pregnant people can still access abortions in many other locations. Therefore, according to Scott Cunningham, a professor of economics at Baylor University, “the ban is primarily changing the travel distance to an alternative abortion provider.”
The Texas abortion bill will likely have a disproportionate effect on low-income people who cannot afford to travel out of state to access abortions. Theoretically, one could still get an abortion if they are willing and financially able to travel out of state.
Cunningham argues that socioeconomic status plays a significant role in the social effect of the abortion bill: “Take a wealthy woman versus a poor woman. The wealthy woman may have a more flexible job and more money that allows her to cover both explicit costs and time costs associated with travel. She can afford to take off from work and book accommodations, for instance, whereas the poorer woman may not. She may work in work that gives less time off, or she works at an hourly wage and thus taking off time means literally foregoing income. The wealthier woman, by comparison, may work on an annual salary that allows her to take off work without such a penalty.”
Statistically speaking, it is clear that increasing the travel distance necessary to access abortion care affects pregnant people. Caitlin Myers, professor at Middlebury College, states that "an increase in travel distance from 0 to 100 miles—a level that courts have generally treated as not unduly burdensome for women seeking abortions—is estimated to prevent 20.5% of women seeking an abortion from reaching a provider, and in turn to increase births by 2.4%."
To many people, this bill seemed to come out of nowhere - it has been known that Texas’ stance on abortions has generally been very pro-life, but this case was special, as the shadow docket was used. The shadow docket is used to consider emergency cases in the Supreme Court. It allows the Supreme Court to reach decisions without live arguments and often with a lack of transparency.
The shadow docket is often a useful tool for the Supreme Court. It enables justices to reach decisions on time-sensitive emergency cases quickly. However, it is being used increasingly for partisan matters as a way to bypass traditional judicial processes. For example, conservative justices have used the shadow docket to block limits on the number of people who can gather in religious spaces due to coronavirus protocol.
The abortion bill will and already has had major social effects. First, Cunningham writes, “one needs to understand that a fundamental idea in economics is the idea that people respond to incentives. An incentive is either cost or benefits -- when the cost of an activity rises, we suspect people will reduce engaging in that activity. And when the perceived value rises, we expect the opposite.” The bill is an example of the cost of an activity rising - it’s intrinsic. The more expensive, time-wise and money-wise, something is, the fewer people will want to engage with the product/activity.
A big takeaway from the analysis of the effects of this bill has been the inequity of the bill. Cunningham writes, “increasing travel distance will reduce abortions and potentially increase births too. And the effects are likely to skew towards poorer women.” So while this bill prevents any pregnant person from getting an abortion in Texas, the people who can make it to other states are still at an advantage for attaining an abortion.
The ability for this bill to pass so easily in Texas is a concern for democratic states as similar legislation could be posed. To that point, Cunningham believes that “it can legally [happen], though we won't know until these laws are challenged at the Supreme Court level. Whether it could pass in another state for now depends on the composition of political preferences throughout the state. I expect red states are watching what happens here, and considering passing similar types of laws. But blue states will not, as those states have historically opposed abortion regulations.”
People all over the nation wait with bated breath as local and state officials share their thoughts on what the future of abortion holds.
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