The Ripple Effects of Roe
Emmeline Ventures
Manage her health. Build her wealth. Live in a cleaner, safer world.
The aftermath of Roe is clarifying more and more the inequities across a woman’s lived experience in the United States, and we’re quickly seeing the decision’s impact on women broadly, and most concerning, the most marginalized women amongst us.
Here’s what we’re keeping an eye on:
Business activism versus performance marketing –
With so many companies issuing statements of support for #abortion care travel and expenses, you might think the workplace is a highly supportive environment for #women generally, and in many cases it is.
But we must ask questions about these same companies' approaches to equal pay, maternity/ paternity time off, paid family leave, and reproductive health benefits more broadly. If companies are ready to support women when we decide not to have a child, are they equally supportive when we decide to have a child? Asking questions and knowing the details will help hold them to account.
Privacy considerations also become top of mind as this now puts women in the position of having to disclose a deeply personal matter to their employers without enough insight on the explicit or implicit ramifications.
Equally important is where these companies operate - and where they make their political contributions – we believe knowing more about where they spend their money should influence where we spend ours.
Cost of living and gender parity –
We’re already in a world where it will take women 132 years (per the WEF’s latest research) to reach gender parity, and the aftermath of Roe is likely to make that number worse – and most dramatically for women of color.
Specifically, since women currently occupy an increasingly high proportion of roles across the food, travel & hospitality, healthcare, and childcare industries – our access to these core services, their role as the foundation upon which other larger businesses can operate, and the ability of women in these roles to generate wealth for themselves and their families could be severely compromised in the aftermath of Roe. We’ve only started to quantify these affects as a VC industry and while we don’t yet know what the full impact will be, we do know the losses will be incremental to the losses women have already experienced due to COVID-19.
What solutions, products, and safeguards do we need in place to limit further adverse impact and preserve every woman’s economic opportunity??
领英推荐
Ripple effects across the rest of Women’s Health and Personal Liberty more broadly --
Everything from services supporting contraception and abortion care, to assisted reproduction, and fertility-based solutions are re-examining their go-to-market strategies, legal protections, data privacy safeguards, and fundamental ability to deliver care.
If follow-on decisions across the lower courts limit access, require data sharing, or otherwise impede the ability to provide consistent care in certain States, we could see the bourgeoning start-up landscape around women’s health pivot, expand, and recreate itself in dramatic ways.
Further essential to watch will be how other individual liberties are affected by this decision. Everyone has seen the concurring opinion which called out Griswold v. Connecticut (access to contraception), Lawrence v Texas (same sex intimacy), and Obergefell v. Hodges (same sex marriage). If one assumed freedom can be overturned, what else can follow?
Making our preferences known by way of our votes and (again) our wallets will be paramount to slow the steady reversal of individual liberties in a country that was founded on the same very concept.
What Washington Does (or Does Not Do) Next
Activity in Washington is underway on both sides of the aisle to usher in new bills protecting what each side deems important. Democrats passed a bill on Friday July 15th establishing a statutory right to provide and receive abortion services and prohibit travel restrictions, which the GOP promptly blocked over the weekend. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers passed a resolution to constitutionally cap the number of Supreme Court justices to nine, which Democrats also promptly blocked.
While its yet to be seen if this tit-for-tat results in any substantial protection to a woman’s right to choose her healthcare outcomes, it is certainly driving continued discussion –and visibility – to the vulnerabilities of our current system and where our votes (and our dollars) matter the most.
The Road Ahead
Our founder community is embedded in every facet of these problems and will keep working towards a more equitable future – now with even more fortitude than ever before.
Co-founder & CSO at Artifcts | Artifcts helps you to declutter and organize the 'stuff' and keep the memories, so you know what it all is, why it matters, and what you'll do with it next. | Swim Mom ??♀?
2 年Thank you for focusing this article on key points that are going underrepresented in general but I think especially in professional organizations where I think there's a lot of pressure on fast responses and still-confused bottomline arguments!