Abortion remains legal to Californians following the right-wing Supreme Court’s decision last month, which overturned federal protections for this reproductive right. But in practice, the ruling could significantly affect communities of color in the state’s Central Valley, many of whom are lower income, Latina, and “already have limited access to health care,” The Fresno Bee reports.
The reason why these residents stand to be affected by the right-wing court’s decision is because of patients traveling from states with abortion bans, ”and that could exacerbate a shortage of medical providers in the Valley, lead to longer wait times for patients and force Valley residents to seek abortions and reproductive care elsewhere in the state,” the report said.
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“Resources in the Central Valley are usually not as accessible or good as what we might be able to access in the metro areas of California,” California Latinas for Reproductive Justice Executive Director Lara Jiménez tells The Fresno Bee. “What we are expecting, unfortunately, for the Central Valley is that people will be needing to travel (for resources).”
Planned Parenthood Mar Monte “is anticipating a 3,000% increase in patients traveling to California for services,” the report said. Director of public affairs Socorro Santillan said that nearly half of the patients that the provider’s clinics see are Latino, and because most live at the federal poverty level, “[t]he organization is the first and only means of health care for many immigrant patients,” the report continued.
In response to the right-wing court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade (an issue that at least two justices clearly lied about under oath), California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law “to help protect patients and providers in California against radical attempts by other states to extend their anti-abortion laws into California,” his office said.
“We know that states like Missouri are already targeting women seeking abortions in states like California where abortion remains legal,” Newsom said. “This legislation seeks to protect women and care providers from civil liability imposed by other states, and sends a clear message that California will continue to be a safe haven for all women seeking reproductive health care services in our state.”
But as The Fresno Bee reports, this “increased demand for care could also mean that some Valley residents might not get the abortion services they were seeking,” and local residents who need more urgent care but may then get pushed out by out-of-state demand may not have the time or financial resources to seek care elsewhere. Prism’s Alexandra Martinez in May noted “mistaken assumptions” that included a belief that a ruling striking down Roe v. Wade would “not impact more liberal states.”
“However, states where abortion care has been easier to access have already been strained by an influx of patients since Texas’ SB 8 passed in the fall of 2021,” Martinez reported. Kelsea McLain, director of health care access at Alabama-based abortion fund Yellowhammer Fund, told Martinez that “[t]his is a reality people are already facing. I think it will get worse as clinics get backlogged and have to schedule appointments further and further out.”
“Latinas and folks of color specifically are being very severely impacted by the overturning of Roe,” Jiménez continued in The Fresno Bee’s report. “We need to realize the cascading effect that this (lack of abortion access) has when someone is forced to continue with a pregnancy that they have decided for themselves that they do not want or are not ready for.”
Recent polling commissioned by Voto Latino and conducted by Change Research found that Latino voters in more than half a dozen battleground states are firmly in support of abortion access. “Latinos also fear for their reproductive freedoms as the conservative majority on the Supreme Court indicates it is prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Voto Latino said in results released just before the right-wing court’s decision. “Over two-thirds of Latinos support the right to an abortion in all or most cases.”
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