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The Public Health Turn In Reproductive Rights, Rachel Rebouché

Washington and Lee Law Review

Over the last decade, public health research has demonstrated the short-term, long-term, and cumulative costs of delayed or denied abortion care. These costs are imposed on people who share common characteristics: abortion patients are predominantly low income and disproportionately people of color. Public health evidence, by establishing how law contributes to the scarcity of services and thereby entrenches health disparities, has vividly highlighted the connections between abortion access, race, and income. The contemporary attention to abortion law’s relationship to inequality is no accident: researchers, lawyers, and advocates have built an infrastructure for generating credible empirical studies of abortion restrictions’ effects. …