Banning Abortion Is Another Economic Blow To Workers

Asha Banerjee has written an excellent article for the Economic Policy Institute. She says that banning abortions is just one more way the powerful are using to disempower and control workers. She is right. I urge you to read the entire article, but here is the conclusion:

Abortion access, and the long-term consequences of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, are crucial economic issues. From labor market outcomes to financial security and earnings, and crucially, the fundamental right to bodily autonomy, abortion access is critical for women to be able to decide their own economic trajectories. This report details the association of detrimental economic policies with abortion bans, and argues that abortion bans are yet another economic policy that subjugates and disempowers workers. To make this case, abortion status (abortion-restricted or abortion-protected) is analyzed alongside five metrics of economic security for working people: the minimum wage, unionization, unemployment insurance, Medicaid expansion, and incarceration rates.

Across the five measures of economic security, states with abortion bans of varying degrees generally follow similar association patterns. That is, states with abortion bans largely had lower minimum wages, unionization, and access to unemployment insurance and Medicaid expansion, and higher incarceration rates.

Abortion bans as an economic policy have not appeared in a vacuum, or even as a narrowly tailored religious concern, since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1972. Rather, denial of abortion access is one additional policy that states have engineered over decades in a sustained project of economic subjugation, control, and worker disempowerment. States that have banned and restricted abortion have largely also kept minimum wages low, underfunded and complicated their unemployment insurance systems, declined to expand Medicaid, suppressed unionization, and preferred to over-incarcerate. These policies, in conjunction, keep working people economically disempowered.

It is crucial for policymakers to recognize that abortion is an economic issue with economic consequences and restore abortion access nationwide immediately. Further, policymakers must work to dismantle the package of additional economic policies that have economically hurt workers for generations.