Post-Roe, Native Americans face even more abortion hurdles
“Native people are having to cross massive, massive distances and absorb all of the travel costs and child care,” she said.
Experts say the issue should be seen within the larger context of the tortured history between Indigenous people and white society that began with the taking of Native lands and includes coerced sterilization of Native women lasting into the 1970s. Native Americans on both sides of the abortion debate invoke this history — some arguing the procedure reduces the number of potential citizens in a population that has been threatened for centuries, and others saying new restrictions are another attack on Native women’s rights.
Many advocates worry that reduced abortion access will make things even worse for women already facing maternal death rates twice as high as their white peers, teen birth rates more than twice as high as whites, and the worst rates of sexual violence.
“Indigenous women don’t have access to reproductive justice in any form, and that includes abortion,” said Natalie Stites Means, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe who serves on the board of the Justice Empowerment Network, an abortion fund. “Any limitation on our health care and any limitation on abortion is going to impact our health and well-being.”
DECADES OF RESTRICTIONS
For centuries, experts said, Indigenous people had their own systems of health care, which in some cases included natural abortive practices.
Today, the main source of care for many is the Indian Health Service, which serves 2.6 million American Indians and Alaska Natives who belong to 574 federally recognized tribes in 37 states. Its clinics and hospitals operate under the Hyde Amendment, which bars them from using federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or threats to a mother’s life.
Even when an IHS patient falls under one of those exceptions, many facilities “don’t have the materials or staff or the expertise to provide that abortion care,” van Schilfgaarde said.