SUMMARY

It’s been more than two years since the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion. Since then, nearly two dozen states have banned or restricted access to the procedure and abortion pills. Special correspondent Sarah Varney traveled to Tennessee to report on the disproportionate impact abortion bans are having on Black women. It's part of our series, Race Matters.

View the transcript of the story.

News alternative: Check out recent segments from the NewsHour, and choose the story you’re most interested in watching. You can make a Google doc copy of discussion questions that work for any of the stories here.

Vocabulary:

Health insurance — An agreement that requires one’s health insurer to pay some or all of one’s medical costs.
Expanded medicaid — Medicaid provides free or low-cost health insurance to low-income people, families and children, pregnant women, the elderly and people with disabilities. Some states have expanded their Medicaid programs to cover all people with household incomes below a certain level. Others haven’t.

WARM-UP QUESTIONS

1. What did the Supreme Court end two years ago?
2. Where was Nicole Blackmon living when she tried to get an abortion?
3. Why did Blackmon want to get an abortion?
4. How many Black women between the ages of 15 and 49 live in states where abortion is banned or limited?
5. Who does Blackmon blame for her experience with the abortion ban?

FOCUS QUESTIONS

While learning about Blackmon’s experience with abortion ban, the video also shows data about the connection between reproductive healthcare with race and poverty. For example, Varney explains that “72 percent of those who were denied an abortion ended up in poverty, nearly 20 percent higher than women like Freeman, who were able to obtain abortion care.”

Using Blackmon’s experience and other information in the story, how do you think access to reproductive healthcare is connected with issues of poverty and race? Do you think access to affordable healthcare is important?

Media literacy: Do you think mainstream media and politicians do a good job in discussing the impact of abortion bans and the (lack of) access to healthcare? What do you think is missing, if any?

Alternative: See, Think, Wonder: What did you notice? What did the story make you think? What would you want to learn more about?

FOR MORE

What students can do:

1. Discuss with the class: Do you or your families have any experience with hospitals and healthcare? If you do, did it feel easy, comfortable, or confusing, stressful? Why?
2. Medicaid covers nearly 80 million people in the country, meaning more than 1 of 5 Americans are enrolled in the program. For many people, affordable healthcare is a matter of life and death. Learn more about medicaid cuts here, and discuss: do you think we should cut or expand medicaid coverage?

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