For Immediate Release: October 8, 2024
Contact: Virginia Lucy, media@napawf.org

WASHINGTON D.C. – The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) returned to session yesterday, upholding an order that allows the ban of emergency abortion access to continue in Texas. The news comes as a devastating blow to pregnant people in Texas on the same day that the Georgia Supreme Court reinstated its abortion ban past the six-week gestational period. These court decisions will have disproportionate impacts on communities of color, including Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities and immigrants, as Sung Yeon Choimorrow—Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF)—describes in the following statement: 

“Once again, extremist courts have displayed their blatant disregard for the health and safety of pregnant people, delivering a decision that will leave countless patients without the life-saving care they need. More than 1.3 million AAPI women of reproductive age live in states like Georgia and Texas where abortion is banned or under attack. 

For our communities, the barriers to care are already immense. We face language barriers, cultural stigmas, immigration status concerns, and inadequate or nonexistent healthcare benefits. On top of that, we suffer higher rates of serious and life-threatening pregnancy complications and maternal mortality. These rulings will only deepen the harm, making an already dangerous situation for AAPI women even worse. No patient should fear dying because a doctor is too afraid of prosecution to act. No healthcare provider should face criminal charges for giving life-saving care.

Access to lifesaving reproductive healthcare should not depend on our zip code, income, the languages we speak, or the color of our skin. In this post-Roe era, we cannot settle for the bare minimum. We have the opportunity to build a future where every person, regardless of who they are or where they live, has the healthcare they need and deserve. It’s time to build something better.”

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The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) is the only organization dedicated to uplifting and building power with AAPI women and girls in the US. Employing a reproductive justice framework to guide our work, we use organizing, advocacy, and communications strategies to assert full agency over our lives, our families, and our communities.