Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
Access to abortion and increased poverty for women and children are inversely correlated: as access to abortion decreases, feminine and child poverty increase. Women who try to access abortions are more likely to already be mothers, and more likely to be living below the poverty line. In post-Dobbs America, abortion is illegal or severely restricted in approximately half of the states. In states where abortion access is most restricted, women and children experience poverty at the highest rates in the nation. The Supreme Court majority that decided Dobbs chose to ignore the connection between abortion and poverty. In doing so, they also ignored their own legal precedent. Specifically, in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court based its decision on the connection between abortion access and women’s economic agency. The Casey Court recognized that reproductive autonomy is critical to women’s overall life planning, most importantly their financial stability. The Dobbs dissenters called out this cognitive dissonance demonstrated by the Dobbs majority, which essentially rejected as irrelevant the overwhelming empirical data on reproductive rights and economic stability for women.
This article is the first to document the law and policy strategies that collectively increase abortion access and reduce feminine and child poverty. Innovative approaches like the 2023 Texas lawsuit by women who almost died because they were denied abortions are yielding results that directly support women’s economic autonomy. State legislatures and governors are legally enshrining women’s rights to access abortion and doctors’ and nurses’ rights to provide abortions. And voters are going to the polls in droves to protect abortion access, with victories in every state where it was on the ballot in the two years since Dobbs. This article chronicles those abortion access strategies and more, including the increasing importance of medication abortion, which remains vulnerable to legal challenges despite the Supreme Court’s 2024 dismissal of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine’s lawsuit for lack of standing.
Grappling with the reality that Dobbs removed the constitution-al right to abortion recognized by Roe and Casey, this article traces the history of the abortion rights battle from the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe in 1973 through Casey in 1992 to Dobbs in 2022. In this recounting, the article contextualizes reproductive autonomy within women’s economic rights, which developed significantly during that same time. This article concludes with optimism. Women’s and children’s financial health are compromised generally by Dobbs, but negative outcomes are not inevitable. Strategies abound to protect and even increase abortion access, and the article describes those in detail. The article also highlights social welfare policies that mitigate feminine and child poverty. The law and policy landscape for women and children economically is changing for the better despite the Dobbs decision, and the momentum must continue. Focusing on these supportive approaches offers pathways to protect the financial futures of women and children in the wake of Dobbs.
Recommended Citation
Jill C. Engle, Access, Welfare, and Lawsuits: Restoring Reproductive and Economic Autonomy Post-Dobbs, 59 U. Rich. L. Rev. 389 (2025).