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The Overturning of Roe V. Wade

Hannah Rimnyak

King’s Western University

GSWS 1020E: Introduction to Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies

Dr. KBJ

January 27th, 2023

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Thesis

The laws protecting women’s right to an abortion and other aspects of reproductive

healthcare have been constant cause for controversy and continue to threaten women’s health

and safety to this day. Roe v. Wade gave women the right to have a safe and legal abortion

within American states, keeping women protected from unwanted pregnancies which could

result from physical or sexually abuse, or simply not wanting to care for a child. The protection

of abortion and rights surrounding abortion is not just merely important, but essential to the

female population, as the act of getting contraceptives is extremely difficult within the U.S., rape

and sexual assault is faced by hundreds of thousands of women’s daily, and because of the

burden pregnancy puts on women’s bodies, which can not only damage physical or mental

health, but even be life threatening. The protection of abortion rights is essential, and the debate

of this should not be in the hands of men who know nothing about reproductive health, or being

a women in general. The overturning of Roe v. Wade is not only terrifying to women, but is life

threatening, especially to those who may be living with low-income, in an abusive household, or

someone who is a person of colour. Abortion is healthcare, and is something that should be

easily accessible, especially to those who may be more vulnerable. In order to regain women’s

reproductive rights back, society must come to the conclusion that abortion is a necessity within

healthcare; it not only gives women the right to choose, but can even save someone’s life.

Abortion is mandatory towards healthcare, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade only puts

hundreds of thousands of women at risk.

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Annotated Bibliography

Aritga, S., Hill, L., Ranji, U., & Gomez, I. (2022, October 6). What are the implications of the

overturning of Roe v. Wade for racial disparities? https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-

health-policy/issue-brief/what-are-the-implications-of-the-overturning-of-roe-v-wade-for-

racial-disparities/

Within this article, the authors describe how the overturning of Roe v. Wade leaves much

at stake for all women, but more specifically, women of colour. The authors explain how

many of the states who would be affected by the overturning of this specific case have

large populations of women of colour. Therefore, in order for these women to access an

abortion they would almost certainly need to leave the state, causing disproportionate

barriers within accessing abortions specifically for people of colour. The main purpose of

this article is to show how the overturning of Roe v. Wade unequally impacts women of

colour as statistics show they are more likely to obtain abortions, have restricted access to

healthcare and come across inequities that makes complicates the process of travelling out

of state to get an abortion, compared to someone of the Caucasian race. The writing style

used by the author within this source supports a wide range of audiences as it is very

descriptive when displaying data, and shows most all perspectives on how the availability

of abortions may be limited due to varying races, whilst additionally displaying visual

graphs of the different ethnicities and what percentage of them had an abortion within the

year 2019. Readers are also informed of the multitude of factors as to why people of colour

have higher rates of abortion then those who are Caucasian, and goes on to explain how

many people of colour have difficulty accessing contraceptives and how the healthcare
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system has a long running reputation of committing racist acts. This article is very

informative on the consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade, and shows many different

perspectives on how doing so would negatively impact all women, but particularly women

of colour. This article highlights my argument within my thesis as it shows that overturning

Roe v. Wade does not fix anything, but rather puts millions of women at risk and takes

away their fundamental rights to accessing healthcare.

McGovern, T. (2022, June 30). Overturning roe v wade has had an immediate chilling effect on
reproductive healthcare. https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1622.short

The authors purpose within writing this article is to challenge the beliefs of those who agree with

the overturning of Roe. V. Wade. Throughout this article, they state how detrimental the

overturning of abortion being protected is, and how greatly it will effect the lives of

women everywhere, as reproductive healthcare will be changed forever throughout the

states who choose to go through with banning abortion. The author also states how

minorities will be severely affected within this decision being made, and how women’s

lives in general will be at stake due to certain health conditions that often occur with

pregnancy, where abortion is the best decision when putting the women’s life and health

first. The authors research also introduces readers to certain places which market

themselves as crisis pregnancy centres, but are nothing of the sort. These facilities market

free pregnancy testing and seem to be a safe space for women seeking help, but instead

entrap pregnant people and convince them that having an abortion is wrong. The author’s

research and writing expresses many underlying concerns that come with the overturning

of protected abortions, which many may not be aware of, but everyone should know. This

article is useful towards the research topic as it explains in great detail how overturning
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Roe v. Wade endangers so many women’s lives, the dangers of certain pregnancy clinics

which are not regulated under HIPAA and do not provide healthcare, as well as how this

creates even greater difficulty for women of colour to access what should be seen as a

necessarily in reproductive healthcare.

Girard, F., 2004. P. 22-26. Sexuality Policy Watch: Global Implications of U.S. Domestic and
International Policies on Sexuality, Abortion and other reproductive health services

https://sxpolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/workingpaper1.compressed.pdf

Girard highlights the many misconceptions that come with the criminalizing of abortion, and

how this particular topic of overturning the protection of abortion has little to do with

reducing or preventing abortion, but rather reducing women’s rights to make decisions

within their own sexual and reproductive lives. This article has many points on how

abortion is constantly misunderstood within the public eye, and the entire concept of

abortion is a misconstrued way of limiting the right to women’s decision making when it

comes to their own bodies. The author’s research focuses on many different decisions

made by the U.S. government (more specifically, male presidential figures) that disable

many measures required to having safe sex, and making medical counselling,

contraceptives and many other important aspects of reproductive healthcare inaccessible to

those who need it most. This writing style is particularly beneficial as it has many

important points which dig deep into the U.S. healthcare system and how it doesn’t benefit

women, but rather tears them down and makes it very difficult for them to receive adequate

care. This book is useful towards the thesis because it further proves that women, still to

this day, do not have close to equal rights to the men in our society, and proves that the
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banning of abortion is more so a power trip for men to have control over women and their

bodily choices, rather than actually being about the act of abortion being morally wrong.