Attack on the Right to Choose is an Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Working People
Silver Spring, MD – Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International President John Costa released the following statement condemning the Supreme Court ruling stripping away nationwide abortion rights in the U.S by rescinding the landmark 1973 case establishing the right to an abortion, citing the negative impact on women and workers.
“The unconscionable decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is a massive step backward for women and workers in our country. While our members hold a variety of personal beliefs regarding abortions, this decision is an attack on the freedoms and rights of women and working people. Access to healthcare, including the full range of family planning services, without fear is everyone’s right and reproductive freedom is a worker’s rights issue.
“At the bargaining table, and while on strike, the ATU fights to ensure our members can determine when they will start a family and how they will care for them. In order to ensure that our members can make their own decisions, we fight for family-supporting wages, comprehensive employer-paid family health insurance, paid parental leave, and paid family and medical leave. By placing our members’ family planning and medical decisions in the hands of state legislators and governors, the Supreme Court has abolished the fundamental rights of working people.
“This criminalization of reproductive healthcare will fall hardest on working-class people, particularly communities of color and low-income families in those states that are poised to immediately restrict reproductive rights and access to a full range of family planning services. Their only option will be to travel across state lines in order to get the health care they need. Unfortunately, our members who operate the nation’s interstate buses will witness firsthand the impact of this wrongheaded decision as they carry over long distances passengers in precarious health trying to cross state lines in order to exercise their right to make their own family planning and medical decisions.
“The right to make decisions about our health and families is at the heart of what we fight for as a union. Our Union will work to elect leaders who will condemn this attack on our constitutional rights and advocate for the low-income workers who will be hit the hardest.”