By Pacific Island Times News Staff
The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum today welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that preserves women's access to abortion pills, in the first reproductive health-related ruling since the reversal of Roe v. Wade two years ago.
“This decision means that, for now, access to this highly effective, safe and life-saving medication will remain unchanged,” said Sung Yeon Choimorrow, the group’s executive director
“Attempts to limit access to mifepristone signal that anti-abortion extremists have no limits to their widespread efforts to limit our bodily autonomy. We know these efforts will cause disproportionate harm to women of color,” she added.
In a unanimous decision, the nine justices rejected a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication, mifepristone, thus allowing the medicine to stay on the market.
The court ruled that the doctors and anti-abortion groups that filed the lawsuit lacked a legal standing to sue.
“While today’s decision is good news, it is absurd this case was ever considered by the highest court in the nation. This also shows that we still have a long way to go before achieving true reproductive justice in this country,” Choimorrow said.
“Several states have already banned or restricted medication abortion and we expect that, regardless of the outcome of this case, those efforts will continue,” she added.
NAPAWF, which filed an amicus brief contesting the lawsuit, argued that medication abortion “is critical to guaranteeing the bodily autonomy of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women, who, like all women of color and marginalized people, face multiple, intersecting barriers to traditional in-person abortion care.”
In a May 2023 report, the Forum noted that Asian-Americans, Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have an awareness deficit about the different methods of terminating pregnancies due to cultural factors, such as the “salient stigma toward sexual and reproductive health topics.”
“This cultural stigma is further exacerbated by a dearth of language options when navigating abortion care inside clinics and healthcare settings,” the report said.
The report noted that access to reliable and accurate information about different abortion methods is critical in states and cities with large populations of Asian Americans, Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
“Meaningful reproductive justice includes the right to abortion, as well as the right to quality maternal care, equal pay, access to healthcare, paid leave, affordable childcare, and the right to make our own medical and fertility decisions,” Choimorrow said.
“That’s why Congress and the Biden administration must enact legislative solutions for reproductive health, including a comprehensive set of laws and policies to ensure that all reproductive health care is affordable and accessible to everyone, regardless of income, immigration status, or location," she added.
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