Abstract

Excerpted From: Suzanne A. Kim, Bringing Visibility to AAPI Reproductive Care after Dobbs, 71 UCLA Law Review Discourse 318 (2024) (118 Footnotes) (Full Document)

The far-reaching impacts of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which reversed Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, has continued to draw crucial and widespread attention. In Dobbs, the Court overruled the federal constitutional right to abortion found in Roe nearly 50 years earlier and affirmed in Casey almost 20 years after that. Simultaneously, the social experience of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in the United States has gained attention, spurred by the dramatic rise of anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected AAPI women. The increasing visibility of diverse AAPI experiences in public discourse, prompted by the rise in violence, has begun to correct longstanding inattention to experiences of AAPI communities.

Dobbs' impact on growing AAPI communities, which include over 12.7 million women, is underexamined in legal scholarship. This Essay begins to fill that gap, seeking to bring together an overdue focus on the socio-legal experiences of AAPI communities with examination of the effects of reversing Roe and Casey on women of color. It does so by prompting a research agenda that connects diverse AAPI women's experiences, abortion access, and Dobbs' impact.

The Essay proceeds in two parts. Part I provides justification for focusing on AAPIs in relation to abortion access and Dobbs, specifically considering the forces that shape visibility and barriers to care for AAPI communities. Part II sets forth ideas for further research inquiry that increase visibility of AAPIs in this context.

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AAPI communities have been largely invisible in research and discourse about abortion rights. A research agenda that examines impacts of abortion access on AAPI communities, particularly lower-income ones, is especially important post-Dobbs. This is crucial as part of an ongoing effort to advance reproductive justice in law and policy that supports the needs of diverse communities of color. As discussed above, a research agenda that focuses on AAPIs should account for the dynamics of cultural essentialism, which reflect and reinforce the related data inequality that shapes research and advocacy pertaining to AAPI communities.

I spotlight above some areas of future research focus, intended to prompt further dialogue about distinct ways in which diverse AAPI communities experience barriers to reproductive care post-Dobbs, we continue to consider the impact of Dobbs on a broad range of women of color. One methodological approach that holds promise for building research on AAPI women and abortion proposed by Sruthi Chandrasekaran and Sung Yeon Choimorrow is “community-informed research.” This method of research, which involves partnerships with community-based organizations, bears the potential “to better understand and address critical reproductive health issues within AAPIs.” As Chandrasekaran and Choimorrow assert, such “community-academic partnerships can help build trust with communities, encourage participation, and design culturally and linguistically appropriate instruments to generate evidence that can improve the lives of minorities.” This approach can assist in building a broader base of research that is less aggregated and more attuned to the needs of marginalized AAPI communities.

The shifting landscape of abortion access post-Dobbs calls for a broad and capacious set of tools for documenting and addressing the interwoven barriers to access to reproductive health care. I offer here some ideas for important areas of work as we continue to address the impacts of Dobbs on a broad range of communities of color.

Professor of Law and Judge Denny Chin Scholar, Rutgers Law School, Rutgers University.