STATEMENT: Roosevelt Institute Responds to Dobbs v. Jackson Ruling

NEW YORK, NY — Today’s Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v. Jackson is an attack on women and our democracy. In contrast with the beliefs of a majority of American people, today’s ruling denies women their bodily, and therefore economic, autonomy. 

We at the Roosevelt Institute will continue to fight for a democracy and economy that work for all. That includes equal access to safe abortions for all pregnant people. We must do everything possible to protect women and pregnant people’s right to an abortion. 

Decades of research show that access to reproductive health care, including abortion, is essential to women’s economic security, especially for Black and brown women whose rights are already more vulnerable:

• Low-income women are more likely to seek an abortion and are disproportionately impacted by barriers to access;
• Women denied an abortion are more likely to be in poverty even four years after the denial and have a lower likelihood of being employed; and 
• A lack of access to comprehensive and quality reproductive health care compounds women’s financial problems. Women living in states with more restrictive abortion laws have also been found to have less job mobility.

We are committed to fighting to reform broken, antidemocratic institutions like the Supreme Court, and we will continue to make the case that women’s economic and bodily autonomy are inextricably linked as the fight to protect women’s right to abortion turns to the states and Congress. 

Reproductive justice is economic justice.