In the first few days after the decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the landmark Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, thousands of Bostonians protested the ruling. They gathered in front of the State House and in Copley Square, marching and chanting across downtown Boston. They held signs displaying messages such as “guns have more rights than women in the U.S.A,” “bans off our bodies,” and “abortions save lives.”
These protests demonstrate the generally pro-choice viewpoints of the people of Boston and of Massachusetts at large, reflected in the stance and policies of the state legislature. As the ruling allows states to decide the legality of abortion within their jurisdiction, abortion will remain legal in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Court had held in 1981 that the due process protections of the Massachusetts state constitution protect the right to abortion. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed an executive order designed to protect abortion providers who serve out-of-state patients. Representative Katherine Clark called post-Roe America a “dystopian nightmare,” and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said that the decision marked “desperate times for our democracy.”
Massachusetts will likely face the ramifications of Dobbs despite the protected status of abortions. As conservative states tighten their abortion restrictions, states like Massachusetts may receive an influx of cases from other states. The states with abortion restrictions make exceptions to save the life of the mother, but the criteria for that threshold tend to be ambiguous. For example, when a patient goes into labor before fetal viability, the patient would develop a life-threatening infection without an immediate abortion. However, it is unclear whether the patient’s life is legally considered at-risk before such an infection develops. Abortion providers, fearing prosecution, may therefore hesitate to act.
Mifepristone, a medicine that ends a pregnancy, is used both for voluntary abortions and for passing miscarriages. Because of that former purpose, it is now banned in certain states. Patients must either pass miscarriages on their own or undergo riskier procedures.
Medical research has shown that restricting abortion access can have negative impacts on both health outcomes and racial equity. A study conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder found in 2021 that a hypothetical total ban on abortion in the United States would increase all pregnancy-related deaths by 21 percent. For Black people, pregnancy-related deaths would increase by 33 percent. The United States currently has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations. For example, the German maternal mortality rate is 3.2 deaths per 100,000 live births. In the United States, the death rate is 23.8 – more than seven times higher. And within the U.S., Black people die of pregnancy-related causes at three times the rate of white people. Dobbs may further these disparities.
States with the most restrictive abortion laws see the highest rates of maternal mortality. In Arkansas, for example, which has a total abortion ban except to save the life of the pregnant person, the maternal mortality rate is 45.9 per 100,000 births. On the other hand, Illinois, where abortion is legal until viability, the maternal mortality rate is a much lower 9.7 per 100,000 births.
The ways in which abortion restrictions will be enforced are not yet clear, but digital surveillance may have a role to play. Mobile devices and apps now have information about nearly every aspect of an individual’s life. Since law enforcement agencies can acquire location data and search terms from data brokers, many worry that law enforcement can use such private information to identify and prosecute people who seek abortions.
In establishing a right to abortion in Roe, the Court had based its decision on a constitutional guarantee of personal privacy. The same legal reasoning was the basis for other landmark decisions such as Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right to contraceptives, and Lawrence v. Texas, which legalized same-sex intimacy. Overruling that precedent therefore opens the right to privacy, and all the other rights established on that foundation, to debate.
The Court that had decided Roe in 1973 likely could not have imagined the importance that privacy protections would take on half a century later. Dobbs now opens a host of uncertainties for Americans and the future of their reproductive health, racial justice, and data privacy.
Many large companies, hoping to maintain healthcare access for their employees, will now pay for travel costs should an employee need to cross state lines to receive an abortion. Here is a list: Amazon, Bank of America, Bumble, BuzzFeed, Cigna, Citigroup, CNN, Comcast, Condé Nast, CVS Health, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Estée Lauder, Goldman Sachs, Hewlett Packard, Ikea, JPMorgan Chase, Kroger, Lyft, Match Group, MasterCard, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, New York Times, Paramount, Patagonia, Paypal, Procter & Gamble, Salesforce, Starbucks, Target, Tesla, Uber, Vox Media, Walt Disney, Yelp, Yahoo, Zendesk, and Zillow.
The National Network of Abortion Funds work to remove financial and logistical barriers to reproductive healthcare. Member organizations provide services ranging from abortion payment to transportation. You can donate at https://donate.abortionfunds.org/give/323375/#!/donation/checkout. To receive funding from the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund, call (617)354-3839 and leave a message with your name, number of weeks pregnant, appointment date and location, and whether the fund can leave a message when it calls back. You can leave a message in any language.
