On June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. This ruling eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion that had been in place for nearly 50 years.
The loss of Roe had devastating consequences for women and people with the ability to get pregnant. In the aftermath of this decision, many states quickly moved to enact strict abortion bans or severe restrictions, creating a patchwork of access across the country. Now, as xenophobic and racist comments by presidential candidate Donald Trump circulate in the news and have become the latest trending meme, a new report reveals how restrictive abortion policies have harmed immigrant communities and impacted their ability to access healthcare, which was already restricted, especially for those without documentation.
This new landscape of abortion access has disproportionately affected marginalized communities, including immigrants. The intersection of immigration status and reproductive rights has created unique challenges for those navigating an increasingly complex healthcare system.
At least 1.9 million undocumented female immigrants live in states that either ban abortion completely or restrict it by 18 weeks, according to “Deepening the Divide: Abortion Bans Further Harm Immigrant Communities,” a report published on Sept. 17 by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice (Latina Institute), the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), and other partner organizations, investigating the disproportionate harm these bans pose to immigrants.
“For us, it’s always really important to highlight immigrant communities, but I think it’s especially important in these moments of particular vitriol against the community because we want to ensure that folks see us as human, really,” Lupe M. Rodriguez, executive director of the Latina Institute, told Reckon. “We want folks to understand the kind of barriers, the kind of issues that we experience… we’re really interested in elevating the stories of immigrants with folks who care about reproductive rights and reproductive health, which the majority of this country does.”
Since 2022, reports from multiple organizations have stressed that abortion restrictions would hit Black, Latina, and low-income communities the hardest, and for over two years now, the U.S. has seen the fallout. From mental health to literally life or death, a recent investigation by ProPublica found that at least two women in Georgia, where abortion is banned at 6 weeks, have died because they could not access a timely abortion where they live, and these deaths were preventable.
As Reckon reported in August, immigrants and migrants, especially those who are undocumented, already faced issues navigating the healthcare industry due to language barriers, barriers to accessing insurance, and the looming threat of criminalization. Abortion bans exacerbate these barriers.
Immigrants face increased barriers in traveling for care
Abortion travel has become essential for people living in restricted states; however, the mounting barriers for some immigrants to travel out of state make it nearly impossible. According to the Latina Institute, immigrants living along the southern border face the longest journeys to find abortion care, citing that Texans travel 36 times farther than people living in Connecticut, adding to the financial costs.
According to the report, Texas, where an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live, operated in a post-Roe-like world even before SCOTUS overturned it, adding significant barriers for immigrants seeking to access abortion. S.B. 8, an act which banned abortion after 6 weeks and allowed any person to sue those who performed an abortion or “aid and abet” one, went into effect in September 2021, making accessing an abortion for those living along the southern border nearly impossible. According to the Texas Observer, Texas was already home to the most cities labeled as abortion deserts, but under today’s restrictions, more Texans are traveling for abortion than in any other state—an estimated 35,000, according to Spectrum News.
While the cost of traveling for an abortion, which can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, is a barrier that prevents many from seeking out-of-state care in itself, lacking documentation like a driver’s license could land immigrants in jail. Additionally, immigration enforcement measures such as Border Patrol checkpoints are often unavoidable, leaving undocumented immigrants facing arrest or deportation if they try to leave the state.
“The rise in criminalization of abortion care also affects immigrant communities who may also be facing criminalization around documentation status… I know that, for the handful of patients who are able to travel to see me, there are dozen[s] who are unable to,” Dr. Gopika Krishna, a New York OB-GYN and abortion provider, told “Deepening the Divide” researchers. According to the New York Times, in the two years after Dobbs, almost two-thirds of 402,000 abortions performed in New York City were for out-of-state patients.
Zaena Zamora, executive director of Frontera Fund, an abortion fund serving people within 100 miles of the Texas-Mexico border, spoke with Reckon last month about the barriers undocumented immigrants face when navigating the abortion landscape. In Texas specifically, with at least 45 border patrol stations built across the state, the fear of criminalization is a true possibility.
“We are the farthest away geographically from every other ‘safe space,’ in safe states in the United States,” said Zamora. “So if our callers are coming from McAllen or Brownsville [Texas], that’s upwards of like a 12-hour drive just to leave the state, right? So there’s a lot of barriers that people have to navigate. Travel is very expensive and costs a lot of time and money.”
This has increasingly made medication abortion important, as it allows individuals to have abortions without crossing state lines and self-manage. However, the anti-abortion movement has sought to restrict mifepristone and misoprostol, and though the Supreme Court voted unanimously in June to preserve access to mifepristone federally, states like Louisiana have been working to classify them as controlled substances.
“For many of them, crossing even a regular highway in a state could mean detention, could mean separation from one’s family, if one [person] is an immigrant or undocumented. And so for many of these communities, medication abortion is the only accessible method to be able to have access to abortion care, and taking it away would be incredibly devastating,” said Rodriguez.
More barriers
The report brings to light less-discussed issues that immigrant women face. In 2021, the Biden-Harris administration adopted a policy for ICE to not detain anyone who is pregnant, postpartum, or nursing unless there are “exceptional circumstances.” However, the ACLU has found violations of this policy in Texas and San Diego. According to the report, a lack of reported data makes it unclear how many pregnant people have been detained, requested an abortion, or had their abortion request granted.
However, there is research available depicting the consequences of denying someone an abortion. The University of California San Francisco’s Turnaway Study found that people denied abortions faced negative economic consequences. According to the study, people who were unable to access abortions they wanted were three times more likely to be unemployed than those who were able to access one, four times more likely to live below the federal poverty line, and children resulting from these unwanted pregnancies faced economic insecurity and poorer maternal bonding.
“We’re already starting to see some of the negative economic consequences of this, and I think we’ll see even more economic consequences down the line as well,” said Rodriguez.
This is especially important given the number of immigrants who are sexually assaulted on their journey, with many assaults resulting in unwanted pregnancies. While these numbers are underreported, a 2023 Doctors Without Borders report found about 397 sexual violence cases in the Darién Gap alone that year, an over 60-mile-long remote crossing point between the Colombia and Panama borders, which has high traffic of kidnapping and rape. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, hundreds of thousands of migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, and other countries cross this area every year.
“The folks that we’re talking about are also folks that have gone through a ton [of] different kinds of trauma,” said Rodriguez. “Other reports estimate that between 60% and 80% of female migrants, including teenagers, are sexually assaulted on the journey to the border, and so, you know, this is sort of compounding everything else about the needs that a lot of people have [for] healthcare and abortion care, in some cases.”
These mounting barriers result in less immigrants receiving care. Polling by the Latina Institute in 2018 found that 34% of Latino voters had a relative or close friend who avoided or delayed healthcare due to fear of discriminatory immigration policies.
Publishers of the report highlight numerous pieces of legislation and policy implementation that support universal healthcare and could protect the rights of immigrant communities, including:
- The HEAL Act, which would expand access to federal programs like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act
- The EACH Act, which would eliminate the Hyde Amendment’s ban on using federal funds to cover abortion in health programs like Medicaid
- The Healthy Families Act, which would establish national paid sick days, allowing workers who need abortion or other care to maintain financial stability and job security
- Expanding protection of pregnant people from being detained by border patrol
- Allowing unaccompanied immigrant youth to receive healthcare services they need in a timely manner, including abortion
Rodriguez also said the upcoming election will be essential for both immigrants and reproductive rights.
“The election means the difference between having the freedom to make our own decisions about our bodies, our lives, and having more humane immigration policies or not,” she said.
Access the full report here.
