While women across the country woke up on June 25th, 2022, with fewer rights to their bodies than the day previously, women from underserved populations will have additional barriers that they will face. The Hyde amendment of 1976 and the limited coverage under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) of 1996 make it so that women from lower socioeconomic status (SES) are unable to get abortions while subsequently being limited in what child’s needs can be provided with assistance (Hyatt et al., 2022). This leaves women from low SESs with limited resources to provide for a child they are all but forced to give birth to.
The psychological effects of being forced to birth a child they aren’t ready for, no matter the circumstances surrounding conception, vary. An extreme, though real, example of this is in a July 2, 2022, news report out of Ohio of a 10-year-old little girl who was six weeks and three days pregnant after being raped by a family member and denied an abortion due to the state’s decision to outlaw abortions after 6 weeks gestation (Fradette & Rudavsky, 2022). Had she not had the resources to travel to another state for those services, imagine what effects this could have on her. Being forced to carry your abuser’s child before you are old enough to attend junior high. She isn’t even old enough to obtain gainful employment, so the financial burden would fall on the 10-year-old’s caretaker(s). Now, imagine her future if this is a child of color or who lives below the poverty line. In the event that she has an uncomplicated delivery and both her and her baby survive, and even if she chooses adoption, one cannot overlook her lived experience of becoming a mother at the tender age of 10 or 11.
Another fear that “experts” share of the consequences stemming from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe versus Wade, which also has dire psychological consequences for women within vulnerable populations, is the possibility of contraceptives being restricted or even banned (Bendix, 2022a). This reality would prevent women who present with medical and personal reasons from not having children, access to Plan B – emergency contraceptive, and even intrauterine devices (IUD) in some states (Bendix, 2022b).
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