Restrictive abortion laws disproportionately impact Black women in GOP-led states, new Democratic memo notes

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the campaign arm that helps elect Democrats to state legislatures, is circulating a new memo in order to highlight what it says is the disproportionate impact of abortion bans on Black women in GOP-led states. Such bans provoke strong emotional responses from Democratic Black women state lawmakers — sadness, distress, but not surprise.  

"It is sad, but it is not surprising. You know, the abortion bans — and certainly since the fall of Roe — have really jeopardized the health of women in general," New York Senate President Pro Tempore Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat, told CBS News. "And because the Black maternal mortality rates are already alarmingly high, nationally, these bans have only exacerbated the overall reproductive health problems that Black women face. So it's sad. It's terribly disappointing." 

Black women have the highest abortion rate in the U.S., according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.