Every June and July, America celebrates two defining ideas of freedom. On Juneteenth, we commemorate June 19, 1865, the day enslaved Black Americans in Texas were finally informed of their freedom, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. On the Fourth of July, we celebrate the birth of a nation founded on liberty, equality, and self-determination.
But for millions of people across this country, especially Black, Indigenous, low-income, immigrant, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized communities, freedom has always arrived late, incomplete, conditional, or not at all.
Nowhere is that contradiction more visible than in reproductive health care.
What does “freedom” mean if you cannot decide whether or when to have a child? What does independence look like when politicians, courts, and extremist lawmakers dictate what happens to your body? What does liberty mean if safe medical care depends on your ZIP code, race, immigration status, income level, or ability to travel hundreds of miles?
Reproductive freedom in America has never been equally distributed.
Black women continue to face maternal mortality rates nearly three times higher than white women in the United States. Indigenous women experience disproportionately high rates of maternal health complications and barriers to care. Low-income pregnant people are often forced to delay care because they cannot afford procedures, transportation, childcare, hotel stays, or unpaid time off work. Immigrants and undocumented communities frequently avoid seeking medical care altogether out of fear, surveillance, or legal consequences.
Since the fall of Roe, these inequities have only deepened.
Abortion bans and restrictions across large portions of the South and Midwest have created a two-tiered America: one where people with resources can still access care, and another where vulnerable communities are forced into medical crises, dangerous delays, or unwanted pregnancies.
Patients now travel across multiple state lines for abortion care. Some sleep in their cars because they cannot afford hotels. Some remain pregnant longer than intended simply because they must spend weeks gathering money and being able to get an appointment. Others are denied care entirely. Clinics are overwhelmed. Providers are under attack. Telehealth abortion access, one of the few lifelines for rural and low-income patients, faces continued legal threats that could further devastate access nationwide.
And while politicians speak endlessly about “family values,” the reality facing many pregnant people is abandonment and economic hardship. Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project data consistently show that 65 percent of patients seeking abortion care are already parents. Many are working multiple jobs. Many are raising children while struggling to survive inflation, housing instability, food insecurity, or domestic violence.
WRRAP’s statistics show patients who cannot afford both rent and medical care. Patients fleeing abusive relationships. Young people terrified to tell their families. Mothers trying to protect the children they already have. Patients in states with total abortion bans traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles simply to receive constitutionally protected health care.
For many, abortion access is not about politics. It is about survival.
That is why Juneteenth and the Fourth of July must be viewed together not separately. One holiday celebrates the promise of freedom. The other reminds us how long this nation has denied that promise to marginalized communities.
Juneteenth teaches us that legal rights alone do not guarantee justice. Freedom delayed is freedom denied. And history shows us that rights can exist on paper while oppression thrives in practice. The same is true for reproductive rights today.
A person may technically have a legal right to abortion in one state, but if they cannot afford travel, childcare, transportation, or time off work, that right becomes meaningless. A right without access is not a right at all.
Real freedom requires equity, access, and dignity.
This moment demands that we ask ourselves difficult questions about who America is actually built to protect. Because a nation cannot claim to value liberty while criminalizing pregnancy outcomes. It cannot celebrate independence while forcing people into childbirth against their will. And it cannot honor freedom while systematically denying marginalized communities access to lifesaving health care.
A truly free America would ensure that every person regardless of race, income, gender identity, geography, or immigration status has the ability to make decisions about their own body and future safely and with dignity. Until that happens, freedom in America remains unfinished business.
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