The Road Ahead: What will Black women face under a Trump administration?

“Under Project 2025, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be tasked with creating a national abortion database and surveillance program, requiring each state to track not only abortions, but pregnancies, miscarriages, and stillbirths. Tracking this data in conjunction with limiting access to care and criminalizing pregnancy outcomes could have a direct impact on maternal health and mortality, which is already a critical issue for Black women who already experience disproportionately higher rates than their counterparts.”

(Project 2025: The Impact on Black Women by the National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda (NBWRJA)

Accordng to the NBWRJA, proposed changes would include:

A national ban on abortion, in addition to the abortion bans in dozens of states, would disproportionately affect Black women the five states with the highest Black populations: D.C., Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and Maryland.
(In August 2024, The Hill reported, “ … nearly 7 million Black women ages 15-49 live in the 26 states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion.”)
Passing a law requiring equal (or greater) benefits for pro-life support for mothers and suggesting that individuals who seek abortion care or contraception may have to then navigate limited or no access to federal benefits for reproductive health care.
Fostering environmental injustice caused by Black women and their families wide exposure to facilities that leak, leach, and emit harmful toxins into the environment …from sewer treatment plants, garbage dumps and landfills, hazardous waste sites, military sites, airports, and other industrial facilities. Facilities that produce toxic waste are systematically and disproportionately located near Black communities, other communities of color
Rendering health care inaccessible or inadequate through block grants* that would decimate access to Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income individuals. (Two-thirds of Black births, are covered by Medicaid.)
Revising or eliminating federal laws that govern equal pay, paycheck fairness, minimum wage increases, protection from workplace discrimination, health benefits, childcare, and affordable housing. **Black women are paid less than white men & white women. On average, Black women in the U.S. are paid 36% less than white men and 12% less than white women.

The generational consequences of such proposed changes are significant. They would negatively affect Black women’s ability to earn an income, strain their financial resources, disrupt their personal, professional, and family lives, increase health care disparities, and adversely impact their emotional well-being.

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*Grant money is federal money given to states for welfare costs, for example, however, with few strings attached. Hence, states do not have to use it to fund social services but can use it for other purposes.

**Project 2025: The Impact on Black Women

Wista JohnsonDecember 27, 2024