Reproductive Rights Are a Union Issue
On Monday, May 3, a draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that the justices had voted to overrule Roe v. Wade was leaked to the news website Politico and later verified by the court. This ruling would overturn federal protections of abortion rights and nearly 50 years of legal precedent. Roe is a significant case on many levels, and there are numerous lenses to view it from: reproductive health care, impacts on low-income families, workers’ protection and more. We recognize that people have strong and often differing opinions on this issue. Our goal with this piece is to discuss why reproductive rights are, fundamentally, a workers’ rights issue.
The Supreme Court and Abortion Rights
In January 1973, the court issued a 7-2 decision in Roe v. Wade, finding that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides a “right to privacy” that protects a pregnant woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion. The ruling itself did not state that abortion rights were absolute, but established a balancing test for state regulation based on a trimester system. Basically, this meant that in the first trimester of a pregnancy, federal, state and local governments could not prohibit abortions at all, but in the second and third trimesters regulations could be be allowed except when the life or health of the mother was at risk. This meant that any existing laws restricting abortion were overturned and subsequent regulation would need to fall within the court’s framework — state legislatures would not be able to take away the right to an abortion. The court also classified the right to have an abortion as “fundamental,” meaning that courts were required to evaluate challenges to abortion laws under the “strict scrutiny” standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States; this classification is generally reserved for fundamental constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech, the right to free association, the freedom to practice a religion of your choosing, etc.
In June 1992, the Supreme Court reaffirmed abortion rights in a 5-4 decision in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case. In this case, the court abandoned the trimester framework from Roe for one based on fetal viability and overruled the “strict scrutiny” standard. While not as important as the landmark Roe ruling, Casey affirmed the right to an abortion, meaning that the initial ruling had been tested and the right sustained. Many saw this as creating precedent, which generally means that the law and/or right is established and that efforts to overturn it would require higher scrutiny.
In December 2021, the court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It is this case for which the draft opinion was leaked.
The Impact of the Loss of Roe and Casey
It is important to note that the leaked draft opinion is not final. However, it's equally important to assess what it would mean if the court’s final decision does strike down Roe and Casey. Trigger laws banning abortion in 13 states would take effect, and unenforced pre-Roe bans in 10 states would become enforceable. At a basic level, the constitutional right to an abortion would no longer exist in the United States, meaning that state legislators or voters could determine whether or not the right to an abortion is available in a particular state, under what circumstances they could have the procedure and, potentially, if providing or receiving an abortion would be a criminal act. Additionally, as written in the draft opinion, there would be no protections for the health and safety of the pregnant woman carrying the fetus, and no protections for those who are seeking an abortion in the case of rape or incest.
In a state like Oregon, overturning Roe would not have an immediate impact. However, without the protections of Roe, a change in the governor’s office or state legislature could change that. In fact, almost all of the Republican candidates in our governor’s race oppose the right to abortion, and many have expressed enthusiasm at eliminating this right. Additionally, there is the possibility that a federal ban on abortions could happen. While it's unlikely that this would happen before 2025, due to both the presidential veto and the filibuster, as we have seen in recent years, our country is vulnerable to radical shifts in laws, regulations and legislative norms.
Why This Matters to Unions
Oftentimes, the only issues that are considered “union issues” are those that relate directly to our contract or to wages, benefits and working conditions, and it’s true that the preservation and defense of those things are often a union’s primary objective. However, many unions, including Local 328, have a long history of fighting for rights that go beyond those outlined in our contracts, because those rights impact how we live our lives and how we work within the framework of our contracts. Reproductive rights, just like civil rights and voting rights, go hand-in-hand with workers’ rights. One set of rights impacts another — they don’t live in a vacuum, sealed off from each other.
If union members can’t vote or their civil rights are violated, effectively making them second-class citizens, that crosses over and impacts their rights as a worker. Reproductive rights — the right to safe and legal abortions, the right to make one’s own health-care decisions — also impact workers’ rights. The right to control our bodies is at the heart of our ability to control our labor. Considerations that go into keeping a pregnancy are wide-ranging and personal, but they are also often economic and can relate directly to working conditions. Such worker considerations include:
Limited or no health-care coverage
Lack of parental leave
Limited or cost-prohibitive child care
Discipline for child-care related absences
Unsafe working conditions during pregnancy
Pregnancy-related workplace discrimination
Workers deserve bodily autonomy, whether that involves deciding when to walk away from an unsafe job site or when to start a family. Both of those decisions can impact a worker’s health, finances and ability to work, and the government has no place restricting those decisions.
In a statement released in the lead-up to the Dobbs case, AFSCME President Lee Saunders and Secretary-Treasurer Elissa McBride said that “…reproductive rights cannot be separated from economic and workplace rights...” and the Oregon AFL-CIO has also issued a statement, which references a 2022 resolution on reproductive rights. Our employer, OHSU, also shared a statement that noted that restricting one’s right “to make their own health care decisions will likely perpetuate multi-generational cycles of health inequity, economic hardship and adverse health outcomes.” Local 328 stands with these organizations and supports the preservation of reproductive rights, because we recognize how strongly they impact worker’s lives.
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