The complexities and consequences of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on abortion and guns extend beyond the rulings alone.

Professors from UConn Law School and Connecticut College spoke about the big picture of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturning of Roe v. Wade and its decision to strike down a restrictive New York gun control law. They say that women of color will be most affected by the abortion ruling. They described how people in Connecticut could be impacted by both the gun and abortion ruling, and they said the rulings foreshadow the high court’s decision-making in the future.

UConn Law Professor Kerri Raissian, an expert on how policies affect fertility, family formation and family violence, said the first thing she'll tell her students is the abortion ruling as well as other recent decisions have something in common — "they all hinted that the court is willing to think about things that, to use (Justice) Brett Kavanaugh's wording, was 'settled law,' or rulings that we long considered established."

Abortion

Mónika López-Anuarbe, Conn College economics professor and director of its public health program, contextualized the court’s decision on abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case. She said the decision leaves abortion up to state legislatures in terms of providers, noting how historically many medical students were not trained to perform abortions. The court’s recent decision will make providers significantly more scarce.

“There are about 1,500 clinics, hospitals, providers that do, but a lot of those places are being threatened,” López-Anuarbe said. “Now, 26 states including the ones with a trigger law, that number of providers is only going to go down. Only 38% of women are in states that actually support reproductive health.”

López-Anuarbe said the June ruling will have a greater effect on women of color, particularly Black women, than it will on white women. She also pointed out that Black women have a higher maternal mortality rate than white women.

“Out of all abortions, almost 40% happen to Black women, who already have a more than three times greater chance of dying when they’re giving birth than white women,” López-Anuarbe said. “It’s no secret that people of color have lower income levels than white people. More than 75% of people who get an abortion are below the federal poverty line.”

López-Anuarbe pushed back on the idea that women have abortions because they simply don’t want children.

“For example 60% of women who get an abortion are moms, so nobody’s hating children, and 40% of women who get an abortion say that they have to because they cannot afford to financially support the children that they have,” she said.

Connecticut codified abortion rights in 1990, and just last month Gov. Ned Lamont signed a law providing protections for people receiving and providing abortions. The law, which went into effect July 1, also expands what medical providers can provide abortions.

UConn Law Professor Anne Dailey, an expert in family and constitutional law, said that states where abortion is legal and available that are close to states that do not provide for abortions “are going to be very important in terms of access to health care.”

“A safe haven state, a state that has passed a law that attempts to legally insulate its providers from any kind of legal liability in addition its residents or anyone who aids someone coming from the state to obtain an abortion, those are also very important for peace of mind for providers,” Dailey said. “Nothing is going to change very much in Connecticut. Abortion will still be available. … We’re not going to see the kind of influx that other states might be seeing of people from other states coming to Connecticut. It’s not going to overwhelm our health care system.”

López-Anuarbe also commented on Connecticut and states like it that are safe havens for reproductive health care.

“When Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, only 9% of people who got abortions in a particular state were from out of the state,” she said. “So it wasn’t very likely. Who knows now? Those numbers are going to go up, particularly in states like Connecticut — we’re expanding abortion care and reproductive health care.”

UConn's Raissian said the court has indicated it might look at previous decisions regarding access to contraception and other family planning matters such as in vitro fertilization.

“What the court has done is it’s given the power to the states to regulate fertility,” Raissian said. “Places like Texas are saying life begins at conception. For IVF that is in a lab, so it’s unclear what is going to happen to these embryos that by Texas law may be living. If life begins at conception … what does that mean for women who have embryos that are frozen or women who want to access their embryos or women who want to destroy their embryos?”

Dailey also addressed what the Hobbs decision says about the court’s thinking going forward.

“After the Hobbs case, the moral choice of abortion can now be taken away by the state legislature from individuals. That’s certainly not a neutral, judicial hands off approach: It’s the U.S. Supreme Court saying, ‘We are not going to be in the business of deciding this moral question,’ but it’s handing it off to the state to make those decisions,” Dailey said. She went on to say that it’s unclear whether Congress has the power to codify Roe v. Wade, or, if Republicans have the majority of Congress, ban abortion.

“It’s an open question, and this Supreme Court could very well say that law is beyond Congress’s powers under the commerce clause,” she said.

López-Anuarbe also addressed the economic implications for women seeking abortions.

“Data shows that people who are able to get an abortion have a much higher likelihood of being employed six months later compared to people denied an abortion,” she said. “You’re not only messing up the mental and physical health of some who didn’t want to have a child, but you’re also messing with their employment likelihood. It’s harder to get back to the labor force as a woman after having a baby.”

Guns

In the June case that struck down a New York state gun law, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc., et al. v. Bruen, the court said that this law needed to be reviewed, and sent it back to the lower court. New York’s law said that to carry a concealed handgun, people needed to show they were in physical danger particular to them.

“It could not be, the crime in your neighborhood is going up, and therefore you can carry a firearm because of community crime,” Raissian said. “It needs to be specific to you. You could be a person who’s left an intimate partner relationship and that relationship is violent and you’re worried about violence from your former partner, or someone has been stalking you or targeting you with community violence.”

The court said these guidelines are too discretionary, classifying New York as a "may issue" state rather than a "shall issue" state. In may issue states, people can ask for a firearm under certain criteria, and the police may issue a permit. Connecticut is a "shall issue" state, which the court mentions in its opinion.

“Three states, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island have criteria … based on objective measures, things like your previous criminal history, your age, anything in your record that might flag you as a person we’re worried about, then you can get denied,” Raissian said. “The other thing is, Connecticut has a pretty robust appeal process. So if you get denied your permit in Connecticut, you can appeal that decision. New York did not have that additional follow-up.”

While the ruling is narrow and only affects six states, including New York, “The court did something much bigger than just thinking about this New York law,” Raissian said. It signaled how it would make similar decisions in the future.

“People like Attorney General (William) Tong are gearing up for an onslaught of legislation since the court has said, ‘We’re going to put new criteria in place,’” Raissian said. “Advocacy groups who want to advocate for looser gun restrictions or rolling back of any sort of gun safety measures are going to have a huge incentive to bring cases before the Supreme Court to see if this new test creates a ruling in their favor.”

s.spinella@theday.com