VIDEO: Racial implications of Dobbs abortion decision
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In this interview, Asha Hassan, MPH, discusses an editorial that she and her colleagues wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine about the ramifications of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
In their perspective, Hassan, a doctoral student at the Center for Anti-Racism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and co-authors described the ways that policies have limited the reproductive autonomy of certain groups, particularly Black and Indigenous communities, throughout the history of the United States. For instance, information on reproductive health was withheld from enslaved Black populations because “increased fertility meant a larger labor supply and higher property value,” the authors wrote.
“We see the Dobbs decision as a part of this constellation of policy decision-making and understand that the Dobbs decision will fall hardest on clinicians, clinics, health care systems and communities in states with the highest maternal mortality and the highest rates of racial inequities in reproductive health,” Hassan told Healio.
Additionally, Hassan outlined ways clinicians and other health care professionals can protect their patients’ access to abortion care.