Black women will face the worst of Roe’s reversal. Men in their lives anticipate trauma.
Black men worry the end of Roe v. Wade could force Black women to resort to desperate measures to terminate unwanted pregnancies, putting their health — and families — in peril.
For sociologist Rodney Coates, the news of the reversal of Roe v. Wade triggered painful personal trauma. In the 1940s, his aunt, a teenager at the time, was forced to travel from their home in East St. Louis, Illinois, to have an abortion in Chicago, “the closest place where she could find a doctor that would treat a Black woman,” he said.
The procedure was legal, but “it was botched,” said Coates, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at Miami University in Ohio. “And she died 400 miles away from her family. This decision by the Supreme Court will create a lot more tragic cases like my aunt’s.”
Black men who spoke with NBC News say they oppose the high court’s decision because it could force many Black women to resort to desperate measures to terminate unwanted pregnancies, putting their health — and families — in peril. They said they also fear it will increase the vast medical disparities Black women already face.
Abortion-rights supporters protest the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade on June 28, 2022, at the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson, Miss.Rogelio V. Solis / APMeanwhile, Barry Holland, a communications executive who is Black and lives in New York, cheered the overturning of Roe v. Wade, saying Black people’s demographics have been stunted since the 1960s because of too many abortions.
Coates, for one, disagrees with Holland. “The reversal is going to cause a lot of trauma within the Black family, within the Black community,” he said. “And, and for Black males, it’s one of those traumas that comes down to feeling helpless and hopeless, where you cannot control this thing or protect the Black woman. Your role in this is going to have to be supportive of these multiple Black women — moms and daughters, sisters and friends.”
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