With the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court last month, the Republican dominated Ohio Legislature may consider banning abortions in the coming months. According to President and CEO of the Dayton YWCA Shannon Isom, banning abortion will have far-reaching effects in the Miami Valley.
WYSO's Chris Welter spoke with Isom the day the decision was announced.
Transcript (edited lightly for length and clarity):
Chris Welter: How are you feeling after the news coming from the Supreme Court today?
Shannon Isom: I think the feeling that I am having is less around anger and more disappointed in the realization of how callous and uncaring that not only the judges but also the federal system that represents the United States is. They continue to show a level of uncaring to women per our history and continuing into our present. Likewise, that the state of Ohio continues to walk alongside that callousness by codifying that with laws that will be triggered in the next month to two months to truly move into law here. They've created a state that is hostile to me as a constituent in a place in which I call home. Going. I'm feeling a little disconnected, I guess, and dejected that I continue to pour into a state that clearly has no regard for me, my family, my daughter, or my health.
Chris Welter: What does this decision mean for the work that the Dayton YWCA does?
Shannon Isom: As the only domestic violence shelter within Montgomery County and the only domestic violence shelter within Preble County, we see women who are in imminent crisis danger. We see women 24 hours, 365 days a year that are dealing with the unintended consequences and complications of intimate partner violence and of power and control and of rape and of sexual assault and of coercion, which also includes pregnancy and childbirth.
We know that the leading cause of death for pregnant and postpartum women are the complications themselves from pregnancy and childbirth. We also know that intimate partner violence is linked to the access of health care and abortion, and that the state of Ohio is already in a health crisis for maternal and infant mortality, which means that even with protections to own your choice within the state of Ohio, even with that, we have more babies dying by the time that they hit one, more women dying in childbirth than other states in this country.
So we haven't been doing it well, even with the law on the books that you have choice, so when you don't have a choice, when you have to flee and cannot get access to health care with an ectopic pregnancy, the ones that will suffer will be black women. We already know that black women suffer with ectopic pregnancies by four times more than our white counterparts.
Ultimately, it will increase our work at the YWCA, with women trying to flee, needing to flee, not having resources to flee, and in that fleeing will be pregnant and within that pregnancy will not have access to resources. And within that, not having access to resources, this will move them into poverty and their children will move into poverty and they will move into homelessness. We know that. And that's the work that we do.
This is not just a health care issue centered on abortion. This is a social justice issue that is centered on our education, on our health care system, on our housing, on our subsidies and our safety nets that we have, on our ability to provide welfare for families and communities. But more importantly, it is centered on literally life and death of women and the children in which they care for.
WYSO will continue to follow what Ohio lawmakers do over the coming months when it comes to abortion access in the state.
Chris Welter is a reporter and corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms.
