Hi Friendos,
Today I am writing and thinking about fiscal policy and taxes and personal finance, I promise, even though it takes me a minute to get there. Thank you for bearing with me.
On Tuesday afternoon, I was walking home from an errand and allowed myself a little fantasy. I thought, “Tomorrow morning I could wake up and a Black woman will be President-elect of the United States.” Hours later my fantasy was crushed.
After Trump was first elected in 2016, I, like millions of others, had a surge of energy for political activism. I was inspired by the women’s marches in the U.S. and across the world to help coordinate a local political group. We ran a couple voter registration drives – we had clipboards! We wrote postcards and volunteered for a candidate running for NY State Senate – he won! In 2017 and 2018 this activism was a significant part of my life.
Even though I had lived in New York for more than a decade by this time, I had never followed state or local politics. I was shocked to learn about then-Governor Cuomo’s machinations to help Republicans hold power in the State Senate and Cuomo’s multiple failures to pass the Reproductive Health Act to decriminalize abortion. This was also when I learned about abortion access funds, non-profit organizations that pay the clinic when someone needs an abortion and doesn’t have the money. How often does that happen, that someone needs an abortion but can’t pay for it? ALL the time. One study (see p. 23) found that ~49% of abortion-seekers had income below the federal poverty line and ~75% below 2x that amount. In 2024, the federal poverty line is defined as $15,060 annual income for a household of one person plus $5.3k for each additional person in the household, so, $20.4k for a 2-person household or $25.8k for a 3-person household. Very low income.
I have had health insurance coverage my entire life. When I was in college, my college-provided plan charged me $0 out of pocket to see a gynecologist who wrote me a prescription for birth control pills which were $5/month, amounts that easily fit in my student budget. If I needed an abortion while I was in college, I would not have had to pay anything out of pocket – and I knew this because I sought out this information and my college made it easy to find. And when I started working, these costs were similar with small co-pays that I could easily afford. What if I didn’t have insurance at all? Today it might be a few hundred $ for an annual gyn exam, up to $600/year for birth control pills, and in the range of $800-$2k or more for an abortion. Those are direct medical costs. Abortions often have other substantial direct costs such as travel costs and lost wages (“Among the lowest wage workers, who are predominately women and workers of color, 61% have no access to paid sick leave.”).
A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found, by examining individual-level credit data for people who were denied vs. received abortions, that “being denied an abortion has large and persistent negative effects on a woman’s financial well-being” (p. 36).
More specifically, they found:
- “Unpaid debts that are 30 or more days past due more than double in size.”
- “[T]he number of public records, which include negative events such as evictions and bankruptcies, increases substantially.”
- “This financial impact extends…with negative effects observed up to four years after the birth year.”
- “Women who were denied an abortion were significantly less likely to have a prime credit score in the two years following the birth.”
They found these impacts are sizeable when compared to other negative financial shocks:
- “[T]he impact of being denied an abortion on collections is as large as the effect of being evicted.”
- “[T]he impact on unpaid bills is several times larger than the effect of losing health insurance.”
- “[I]t appears that denying a woman an abortion reduces her credit score by more than the impact of a health shock resulting in a hospitalization…or being exposed to high levels of flooding following Hurricane Harvey.”
We know that “abortion legalization has had a significant impact on women’s wages and educational attainment, with impacts most strongly felt by Black women.” And the reverse will be true as well. Of course, there is a huge difference between health care being legal and “accessible” vs. actually getting that health care. Have Democrats been willing to fund abortions?
The Hyde Amendment, which bars use of federal funds to pay for abortions, was first passed in 1976. “The policy is not a permanent law but rather has been attached as a temporary ‘rider’ to the annual Congressional appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and has been renewed annually by Congress.” Including years when Democrats controlled the Presidency, the Senate, and the House, such as in 2021 and 2022.
Hyde inspired similar language for other federal programs. So if you need an abortion you are probably out of luck if you’re on Medicaid (only 17 states allocate their own abortion funding for those on Medicaid), the Indian Health Service, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the military’s TRICARE, if you are in federal prison, are in the Peace Corps, or are on the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Ditto if you are on an Affordable Care Act plan because these benefit from federal tax subsidies. That’s a LOT of people!
There are some limited exceptions to the Hyde Amendment where federal funds may be used to pay for abortion, such as in cases of rape (you might be required to provide police reports and other substantial documentation in that case). But some states refuse to comply with the law and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) has not been willing to take enforcement action, something any President could direct with an Executive Order (no support from Congress needed).
In this election cycle, many Democrats campaigned on platforms favoring legal abortion. But laws can only provide theoretical access – it takes actual money to provide health services.
I mentioned my own political activism during 2017 and 2018. At that time I thought I had gone through a political awakening and that activism would be part of my life from then on. But like many others, my energy and heightened emotions faded and our little grassroots group eventually disbanded.
What never faded was my monthly financial support of DSA and my local abortion access fund. These are small amounts in my monthly budget and despite having lived through some big ups and downs in household income since 2017, I never once considered cutting that support.
Right now, if you would like to support Black women, one thing you can do is help fund abortions. If you would like to help alleviate child poverty, you can help fund abortions (most people seeking abortions have kids). If you would like to help women obtain more education, avoid deeper debt, and avoid bankruptcy, you can help fund abortions. Our elected representatives aren’t getting the job done, so we can extend a helping hand.
If you get value from this newsletter, I hope you will consider making a monthly donation of $8 or $12 dollars (or more) to the National Network of Abortion Funds.
-Stephanie
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