Roe has been my belief system all my life. The senior year photos from high school were kept in a book that I received when I graduated. One page invited us to envision our careers and future salaries in 10 years. I predicted that I would become a lawyer and earn a realistic $35,000 per annum. I was not stupid. It was obvious to me that it might be more difficult to achieve this if you are a woman of color or a woman of color. I never thought to temper my aspirations, being a girl.
Roe had made it possible for women to enter the paid labor market so much that high school seniors were often asked to answer a question about their economic goals. Flipping through that book today feels like reading a fairy tale, the old Grimms’ ones and not the new Disney ones.
Roe V. Wade gave me many basic rights that men have, so I was able to choose where I worked. Millions of women have been able to do this, in different ways.
Roe V. Wade was overthrown, and we now have different rights in all labor markets. An empowered worker can migrate in a global economy. Dobbs makes it impossible for women to assume that they can work in Idaho in the same way as they can in Oregon or Washington. I cannot negotiate wages and time off with an employer that has the same risk profile than those who are unable to become pregnant. An employer who offers lower pay in a state with abortion care indirectly benefits from women’s inability to take our labor on the open market across the nation. Thanks to a rogue court, women’s lives are now more determined by the accidents of our birth than they were a week ago.
Those accidents of birth include circumscribing women’s lives by making them dependent upon corporate beneficence. Some companies, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, immediately issued statements that they would offer reimbursements to employees for traveling for abortion services. The largess of Dick’s and other companies is noteworthy. It does require women to tell their bosses about their health. This does not mean that corporate leadership or management will not change. Employers with good intentions can move on and off. They also differ in how sincere they are with employee support.
Starbucks also released a statement, months before the decision was officially made, pledging support for employees who are seeking abortion care. However, the statement states that workers in unionized stores cannot be guaranteed that benefit. Starbucks union drives have increased worker power. Many of these workers are women or can-be-pregnant women. Corporate arbiters of human Rights should not be allowed to attach support for abortion care or nonunionized labor.
The majority opinion in Dobbs argues that it is merely making the right to an abortion a state’s decision. In reality, the justices are making it a corporation’s privilege. It is impossible to maintain a society when half of the population must rely on strangers for basic tasks like work.
Economics, labor, jobs and money matter for more than just money. The basic units of U.S. citizenship are income and jobs. In practice. We earn dignity by working. Income is one of the ways we fund the state through taxes and production. The state also relies on employers to provide goods such as social security and health care, which is how jobs are funded.
For only 58 years of the nation’s 246-year-old economy, women have been able to avail themselves — thanks to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — of the full citizenship that we effectively purchase through our jobs. We have been able migrate from the South to the North, and West to seek better wages and more opportunities. Access to abortion gave women better and more economic opportunities. These economic opportunities made women more financially viable. Yes, we have cobbled together economic opportunity for less than men. Any paid work made us freer and made us more whole before the courts and institutions.
Today, we pay a higher price for that freedom than men. It is a price that will be passed on to our children. Many people who celebrate the Dobbs decision feel nostalgic for the American economy of pre-World War II America. This economy prevented women from competing with men on the paid labor market. It also relied on unions to protect working-class men’s incomes. This economy is gone. This economy won’t magically provide good jobs or good wages for men, who will then pass those on to their wives.
As a Black woman, the debts that white racism imposed on the lives of my grandparents, great-grandparents, and their great-grandparents impacted my own. I know what it feels like to inherit such an inheritance. It makes your life less enjoyable. It makes your community poorer. It can also lead to the collapse of a society.
That we are all less free than we were on Thursday is, even by now, a cliché. This is truer for trans and poor women than for other people. Don’t confuse the specific harm with the localized harm. If women are unable to move freely in this country, and they don’t have the basic human rights to migrate, then we all become anchored to the poverty of our choices.
There are worse days ahead. All indications are that the Roe v. Wade decision is only the beginning of decisions that could reverse hard earned human rights for all Americans. Justice Clarence Thomas indicated that L.G.B.T.Q rights, birth control access and health care privacy may be in the court’s cross hairs.
I still feel a bit overwhelmed by the new world that I have stumbled upon. However, this feeling should not be relegated to inertia. We can and should give to local organizations that provide services for abortion. Donations will not save us. Consumer citizenship has taught us that politics can be viewed as a collection of transactions that we can buy like a car or shoes. It will take political engagement and great resistance to restore human rights. I am not optimistic.
Justice Samuel Alito made the majority decision. Journalist Stephanie Mencimer wrote in Mother Jones that it was always “going to be Alito” who would write the majority decision. Alito claims that the court can’t be concerned about how its decisions affect people. Linda Greenhouse of The Times called the opinion arrogant. I would expect arrogance from a conservative judge. It is more important for me that the court makes such bold decisions.
This court is not afraid to show its hand and is unafraid of the electorate. The emperor doesn’t care that he doesn’t wear clothes. Nancy Pelosi reads a poem. President Biden issued a tepid commitment to women’s rights. People are not afraid of anyone. That is the people’s fault.
The fight now shifts towards the states, where many legal experts are unable to understand this new reality. Some states are still unsure of who has the authority. Other states want to refuse to enact Dobbs’s dictates but do not know how. We should be there to help determine how a life after Roev. Wade will look. It will be difficult. There will be setbacks. There is no other way forward, and there are many ways backward.
Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, the author of “Thick: And Other Essays” and a 2020 MacArthur fellow.
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