ARE BLACK WOMEN PART OF
THE ABORTION RIGHTS DEBATE?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Last Saturday, while most North Carolinians were enjoying a muggy, cloudy Saturday before Mother’s Day, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper was making national news, defiantly vetoing the 12-week abortion restriction bill passed by the Republican-led NC General Assembly just days before.
“This bill will create dangerous interference with the doctor-patient relationship, leading to harm for pregnant women and their families,” Cooper said to hundreds of demonstrators. “With its medically unnecessary obstacles and restrictions, it will make abortion unavailable to many women, particularly those with lower incomes, those who live in rural areas, and those who already have limited access to health care.”
At deadline Monday, the GOP majority in both the state House and Senate had not voted to override the governor’s veto yet, but were expected to now that they have the requisite numbers to do so.
At least one House Republican lawmaker said before Gov. Cooper’s veto that he “would not be bullied” by the governor to not vote to override to his veto.
In the midst of this hyper-sensitive political tug-of war over women’s right to choose in North Carolina, where do African American women stand?
“We were not invited to the table,” opined state Sen. Kandie Smith (D-Greenville) during floor debate last week. “We were not considered when it comes to what do you think would be good. To me, it’s like my voice doesn’t matter.”
Sen. Smith continued, “Black women have been fighting for freedom of their body since slavery. We’re placed back in the situation where someone is trying to tell us what to do with our bodies. We’ve been fighting against that long enough. That is not okay.”
For Black women, the subject of maternal health is one of survival, researchers say, so much so that they are three times as likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Regarding abortion, many Black women of childbearing age are not as free as their white counterparts to decide whether to carry a child to term or not because of socioeconomic and health justice issues, abortion rights activists say. Not making a living wage, not having health insurance, not having access to safe contraception, not having access to adequate non-racist health care were just some of the factors involved in determining whether a low-income female of color decided whether or not to give birth.
Whatever Black women decided, the odds were still against her.
In 2019, Black women had the highest rate of abortions nationally at 23.8 per 1,000 women, according to the CDC.
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v.Wade in June 2022, many of those activists warned that Black and other women of color would be disproportionately affected by the ruling overturning a woman’s right to choose in states that did not already specify that right.
And in North Carolina, Black women still account for the state’s high maternal death rate.
Given that staggering reality, African American women like Sen. Smith, state Senator Natalie Murdock (D-Durham), and even NC Congresswoman Alma Adams (D-NC-12), spoke out when it was clear that Republicans in the NC General Assembly were going to impose strict abortion restrictions.
“Even without the reality of the maternal health crisis, the Republican abortion ban is wrong,” Rep. Adams said in a statement when the Republican abortion restriction was first introduced.
“It devalues the hard work of pregnancy, which should always be voluntary. It dehumanizes women by taking away their bodily autonomy.
Involuntary servitude is expressly prohibited by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution; legislation that forces the work of pregnancy, regardless
of injury or death, should always be unconstitutional, and this bill should fail.”
And even clergy, like Bishop William Barber of Repairers of the Breach, called Republican legislators “extremists” for imposing a law that restricts abortion rights, at the same time they lift all restricts for obtaining and owning a firearm.
“It is absolute hypocrisy to say you care about life and then you write a law that puts poor and low-income women’s lives in jeopardy,” Barber recently said.
If a Gallup poll from Sept. 2020 is any indication, Black lawmakers like Rep. Adams, or leaders like Bishop Barber are not alone in claiming African American females have the right to choose as well.
From 2017-2020, 46% of African American polled agreed that abortion was “morally acceptable.” That is a significant jump from the 31% polled from 2001 to 2007.
Given all of the available data, African American females have a rightful place in the abortion nights debate, because the decision on whether or not o have a child could mean their very lives.
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DEBT CEILING CRISIS
IMPORTANT TO BLACKS
By Cash Michaels
An analysis
Think the debt ceiling crisis is not important to you, especially if you’re Black?
Think again.
The debate between Republicans in Congress, and the White House, over raising the debt limit as soon as possible before a national financial catastrophe occurs is very much an African American issue, especially if you’re a retiree who gets a check from Social Security every month, or a federal paycheck, or someone who gets Medicare or Medicaid health insurance.
So what is the debt ceiling, and why is it so important to us?
To put it plainly, the United States government could literally run out of money to pay its bills by June 1st according to the U.S Treasury Dept. and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, causing the nation to default on its debts (money owed).
Congress created the debt ceiling in 1917 to allow the U.S. Treasury Dept. to pay off federal bills and loans without always going back to Congress for the money. But sometimes the government spends more than allotted , thus the need to raise the debt ceiling (or credit available).
Defaulting on the debt ceiling has never occurred before (though we came close in 2011), and all that needs to happen to avert it is for Congress to vote to raise the debt ceiling, which is currently $31.4 trillion.
But that’s not happening now because Republicans who hold a slim majority in the U.S. House want some policy concessions from President Biden before they vote to raise the debt ceiling. The GOP wants cuts to social welfare programs, and has passed legislation detailing such.
Many of those programs are important to the African American community.
A 2017 study shows that 35 percent elderly married African American couples, and 58 percent of unmarried elderly African Americans depended on Social Security for at least 90 percent of their monthly income. If the current debt ceiling crisis is not resolved, all of the above is in danger.
You’re not on Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, you say, so why should you still be concerned? Because the negative impact of the federal government failing to raise the national debt ceiling would be so great, private markets, not just here, but around the world would be negatively affected.
Moody’s Analytics projects that at least one million Americans could lose their jobs. Businesses would have to lay off workers in order to survive what would be a severe recession, and usually when that happens, African Americans are the first to go. Black employees of the federal government would find themselves among the first to be laid off since important agencies would be shutdown across the country.
No doubt many state, county and local governments would be affected as well, limiting the flow of tax revenue available.
In short, while the specter of a national debt ceiling crisis would hurt the average American citizen because of its wide-ranging impact on the
national and local economy, the high percent of African Americans dependent on the social safety net provided by the federal government, would have a devastating impact on the people who could afford it the least.
Per the latest published reports, Republicans in the House say they are willing to raise the national debt ceiling only until May 2024, effectively forestalling the next financial crisis until the middle of the next presidential campaign. They also want to limit student loan forgiveness, put new work requirements on welfare programs like SNAP (food stamps), and cancel unspent COVID-19 relief funding.
Pres. Biden has finally begun meeting with Republican Congressional leaders to strike a deal on raising the debt ceiling. The president said that those talks are “moving along,” but insists that he wants a clean deal with no programs cuts.
If the president feels he has to in a pinch, Biden can invoke the 14th Amendment, which allows the U.S. Treasury to ignore the debt ceiling as needed. Congressional Democrats prefer Biden opt to use it, instead of giving in to the Republicans.
Right now, talks are suspended as Biden is scheduled to leave the country for a meeting in Japan. So whatever money you have on hand now, hold on to it until this political mess is settled.
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