It’s 2040. We Need to Keep Abortion Legal in New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/opinion/roe-vs-wade-abortion.html

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Editors’ note: This is part of the Op-Eds From the Future series, in which science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write Op-Eds that they imagine we might read 10, 50 or even 200 years from now. The challenges they predict are imaginary — for now — but their arguments illuminate the urgent questions of today and prepare us for tomorrow. The Opinion piece below is a work of fiction.

As the New York legislature convenes this week to begin debate on S9764, I would like to offer my thoughts as a gynecologist who still provides that rarest of services, abortion. Our legal status is under threat, as our lives have been for decades. More important, the legislators pressing for the passage of this bill are dishonest in their motives and willfully blind to the consequences of its probable passage.

The basis of S9764 is the economic costs to New York, which is now one of only two states where abortion is still legal (the other is Hawaii). Recent estimates place the public burden of providing this medical service at $50 million. But the more significant cost to the state comes from the financial and social assistance given to the women and families who come here from out of state, which current estimates put at around $5 billion.

A bit of history should help explain.

Following Planned Parenthood v. Alabama, in 2022, the landmark ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, 14 states outlawed abortion. Seven states — Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio — began prosecuting women who traveled out of state for the service. As a result, thousands of desperate women left their homes, jobs and communities to move to an adjacent state, terminate their pregnancies and remain there, free from prosecution. Without employment or their usual networks of support, some of these women needed social services, a burden that these days falls almost entirely on the state.

To solve this problem, most so-called abortion states adopted legislation restricting access to publicly funded abortions. Under these new laws, only permanent state residents could seek pregnancy terminations at publicly funded hospitals or clinics. This echoed the solution of 1970s America, when three of the four states allowing legal abortions restricted access to state residents. At the time, New York was the only state allowing nonresidents to seek these services — but without help from Medicaid or the state’s public hospitals.

That these laws disproportionately affected black women is evident from the figures of 70 years ago: Seven out of 10 residents receiving the service were black, but eight out of 10 nonresidents were white. In other words, the woman of color who could not afford the private doctor, the travel or the follow-up care most likely stayed home and tried to take care of things herself, making her chance of death 12 times more likely than it would be for a white woman. Even when she could afford the travel and private care, the inevitable delays — in booking a long-distance appointment, arranging leave from work or childcare, finding a discreet place to stay and anticipating the aftermath without local medical help — made her far more likely to seek termination after the 12th week of pregnancy and experience life-threatening complications.

Travel is much cheaper today, in 2040, than it was in 1970, and the procedure itself is a one-hour office visit that many abortion providers offer on a sliding scale. And we have watched as state by state, the rest of the country has slowly adopted the same laws as those original seven states, prosecuting women who return from a procedure undergone in another state.

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Rich or poor, these women can’t go back home. That’s why New York’s decision, in 2032, to require six months’ residency before seeking to terminate a pregnancy has done almost nothing to stem the tide of women — many of whom are already mothers — moving here from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and, most recently, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The residency requirement means that access to abortion hinges completely on wealth. Women with the means to establish residency as a safety net can easily buy condos in Manhattan or Cold Spring. Women who can scrape together a few hundred dollars to self-fund their abortion but cannot afford a pied-à-terre are now completely out of luck.

Today, even with these draconian provisions on residency and public health funding, New York is the only mainland state still providing legal abortions. The state legislature now proposes joining the herd. S9764 gathers all the restrictions adopted by other states into one definitive bill: no abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat; no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother; sentences of up to five years for anyone found performing abortions; sentences of nine months and potential loss of custody of minor children for anyone undergoing an abortion.

S9764 does not address other reproductive technologies, but it is worth noting that within five years of adopting forced-birth measures, 25 states passed legislation banning so-called abortifacient means of birth control. Similar measures are under consideration across the country. People who believe that the New York legislature will pass S9764 while “shoring up support for pregnancy prevention,” as one male senator put it, are fooling themselves.

The dishonesty of this bill is evident when we consider its probable outcome. Senator John Higginbottom, the bill’s sponsor, claims that “New York cannot afford to open its doors to irresponsible women who will remain indefinitely on our welfare rolls.” This argument falls apart the moment you consider how much it will cost to swell the state’s ranks with unwanted children and mothers who cannot afford to feed them.

The true motive of this bill is not economic but religious: as part of Senator Higginbottom’s previous attempt, in 2035, to eliminate choice, he stood on the Senate floor and quoted from the Bible. The outcome of its passage will be not life but death. I know this firsthand, having attended the funerals of women who died from sepsis and women who died at the hands of partners enraged by an adulterous pregnancy.

I have also witnessed the good that New York’s abortion laws have done. I have helped women with six children and no income to terminate their unwanted pregnancies. I have helped terrified girls who were raped by family members. Several times, in states where abortion is illegal, I have testified in cases where a hidden pregnancy resulted in a newborn abandoned in an alley. I have seen the promised bills to provide adoption services, child-care services, support for single mothers and sex education all die in committee.

This proposed law is not only economically senseless but also cruel. I urge the legislature to reject this bill and instead join with Hawaii to demand federal legislation reinstating the right to abortion not just in New York but across our troubled land.

Lucy Ferriss is the author of 10 books, including “The Misconceiver,” a novel about the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

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