How Strict Abortion Laws Funnel Pregnant People Deeper into Poverty

On December 7, for the first time in at least 50 years, a woman had to petition a judge to be granted the right to terminate her pregnancy. Kate Cox, a 31-year-old Texas resident, wanted to have a baby. Still, after learning that her fetus had a chromosomal abnormality that is almost always fatal, she knew that she would have to seek an abortion to avoid risking her life and future fertility. Because of the new obstacles posed by Texas’s abortion law, Cox faced difficulties seeking the potentially life-saving procedure. Even after Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued a temporary restraining order to allow the abortion to take place, Cox faced additional barriers when the state supreme court overruled the lower court’s decision. Ultimately, Cox had to leave the state to seek the procedure elsewhere.

Strict abortion laws funnel people further into poverty by forcing many people to carry pregnancies to term but doing little to care for the children once they are born.

In the wake of the dismantling of Roe v. Wade, Cox’s case shows how difficult it is to get an abortion in states like Texas—even when the procedure is medically necessary. It also shows how costly it is. Whereas Cox had the means to make the trip to another state to receive the procedure, many do not have such resources. Strict abortion laws funnel people further into poverty by forcing many people to carry pregnancies to term but doing little to care for the children once they are born. As census data shows, Texas ranks 45th in overall child wellbeing, and 20 percent of the children in the state are living in poverty, compared to 16 percent of children nationally. The numbers are higher for Black and Latinx children.

Even before Texas passed its near-total abortion ban, data indicated that such abortion restrictions pushed people deeper into poverty.

In an article published by The 19th News in 2021, Chabeli Carrazana noted the findings of The Turnaway Study. The study followed 1,000 women who were seeking an abortion: one group was able to receive the procedure while the other was denied it.

In general, about half of people who receive an abortion already live below the poverty line. As Carrazana noted, most of those who participated in the study were low-wage workers. The study ultimately found that those who were denied care fell deeper below the federal poverty line. “About 72 percent of the women who did not receive an abortion ended up living in poverty, compared with 55 percent of those who did,” Carrazana said.

“Even when low-income women in Texas are able to secure financial aid…to cover the procedure’s cost, many still lack access to care because they cannot afford travel costs and childcare.”In the wake of the near-total ban in Texas, it has become even more challenging for poor pregnant people to seek an abortion if they desire. According to an article by Lindsay Johnson featured in the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy, the six-week abortion ban in Texas “will increase the average one-way driving distance to an abortion clinic by 14-fold from 17 miles to 247 miles.” At a nonstop driving speed of 70 miles per hour, the article notes that the trip will increase the average time for someone traveling to seek an abortion by three-and-a-half hours each way. In many cases, the trip will require an overnight stay, further compounding the cost.

“Considering just the average distance, a minimum wage worker earning $7.25 an hour would have to pay $34.59 for gas or five hours’ wages, driving a car that gets 20 miles per gallon at $3 per gallon,” Johnson wrote. This would be more than a full day’s earnings for a round trip, in addition to potential lost wages from time off work. For a person from Texas seeking an abortion in states like Louisiana and Oklahoma, the cost would be even higher because, in these states, multiple visits to an abortion provider are required before a person can undergo the procedure. For pregnant people who already have children, they may need to consider the additional cost of childcare, lodging, and other factors.

Undoubtedly, particularly for low-wage workers, this trip can be demanding and even out of reach. “Even when low-income women in Texas are able to secure financial aid through abortion funds to cover the procedure’s cost, many still lack access to care because they cannot afford travel costs and childcare,” Johnson wrote.

In many ways Cox and Jimenez are vastly different, but they are united by the fact that they were deprived of being able to seek a safe, potentially life-saving abortion in the state where they lived.

As Johnson noted, Texas is the same state where Rosie Jimenez died after the Hyde Amendment denied her insurance coverage for safe abortion and care in 1977. Jimenez is the first woman known to have died in the United States due to an unsafe abortion after the passage of the Hyde Amendment, which barred the use of Medicaid for safe, medically supervised abortions. Like most women who seek abortions today, Jimenez was a mother who sought an abortion largely because she knew she could not afford to care for another child. She had to seek a cheaper, less safe abortion in Mexico because the Hyde Amendment barred her from using her Medicaid insurance to fund the procedure in Texas.

In many ways, Cox and Jimenez are vastly different, but they are united by the fact that they were deprived of being able to seek a safe, potentially life-saving abortion in the state where they lived. Over 45 years after Jimenez’s death, strict abortion laws in states like Texas continue to have far-reaching effects, threatening pregnant people’s health, and pushing families deeper into poverty.