Today is a big day with #reprorights. Of course I couldn’t find a great quote on #HandsOffMyBC or the Zubik v. Burwell case when I was putting this together. (I bet right now that’s a completely different story. What a difference 24 hours makes.) However, I chose to focus on the ever important issue of repealing the horrific amendment of Hyde.
Before I delve into that, however, I just want to introduce Imani Gandy to those unfamiliar with her, and why I chose her. Simply, for this year’s Woman’s History month, like Black History month, I focused in on contemporary figures (With the exception of Mary Wollstonecraft.) The idea is to look at their work and show the contemporary issues of women. Imani Gandy is a friend and mentor. She (and Jamilah Lemieux) is the reason I created my annual Black Feminism week (Because it was Imani’s reaction to Jamilah’s story that served as inspiration), and I find her work super insightful. I don’t always agree with her political analysis, but that isn’t that important.
The Hyde amendment was the first major attempt to make abortion illegal. Named for Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, the amendment makes it illegal for medicaid to cover abortions. Like all regressive restrictions on women’s health care this does much deeper damage to society. This in essence created a two tier health care system in America. Imani Gandy did an amazing job laying out how Hyde makes Conservatives into hypocrites over at Rewire (The newly rebranded RH Reality Check. Full disclosure, I have done some work for RH Reality Check. Even if I hadn’t worked for them, it is still a great resource on reproductive health issues and more.)
I want to build on her framework for this piece and add how Hyde also reinforces institutional racism. Even though Imani doesn’t actually say that in her article, this is a prime example of how institutional racism works. It is how we create markets. Unlike those who think markets are wild animals that if you capture like Pokemon they will work for you and you then get rich *Cough Conservatives Cough*, I know markets are formed by rules. The healthcare market is no different. When you create a market that excludes a certain class of people that means that poor people are forced to have more children causing more poverty.
When you have a group of racists Conservatives in power who demonize “Welfare Queens” and use coded language that they are poor black people, your two-tiered health care system reinforces it. As Imani wrote:
And politicians certainly should not be in the business of forcing poor women and women of color to carry pregnancies to term because they don’t have the money to end an unwanted pregnancy.
It’s inhumane.
When it comes to Black women specifically, the Hyde Amendment and other public funding bans at the state level are perverse.
Anti-choice politicians force Black women to carry to term pregnancies that they either don’t want or can’t afford, wielding them as a weapon in their movement’s ideological war against abortion. But later that zeal turns to disdain when Black women have to rely on government programs to raise the children they have been forced to have.
Though she does not explicitly says it, this cycle of markets created by politicians and their negative affects on a group of people reinforces negative stereotypes that already exist is the very definition of institutional racism.
Laws have effects. Like the old saying, “The path to hell is paved in good intentions,” sometimes the laws in question have negative effects and they mean well. Hyde is no such law. Hyde was created as a way to ban abortion access to poor people. Like everything done with the intention to hurt, there are negative side affects, and this one reinforces white supremacy.
It’s long over due to repeal Hyde. The amendment is older than I am. While we follow #HandsOffMyBC and the Zubik v. Burwell case today, let us not forget that there is so much we must fight for and this fight is far from over.
If you like this, support it.