Texas is Trying to Contain Latinas

Texas is a state where perceived threats are made into victims. It’s a place where hardship, inequality and want can blind a person to the immense political power of the most marginalized and the desperation of the powerful. Here, few better represent both victim and threat than the Texas Latina. Her decisive position in the political ecosystem was made evident with the recent passage of a state law that bans abortion after six weeks into a pregnancy, before most women know they are even pregnant.

The law, which makes no exceptions for victims of rape or incest, went into effect on Sept. 1st. It deputizes private citizens to act as unofficial abortion rights police, allowing them to sue abortion services providers or anyone who “aids or abets” a person trying to obtain the procedure. Successful lawsuits offer a $10,000 reward (plus legal fees), essentially a bounty, to citizen police. The brunt of its force is expected to fall on those least able to access out-of-state abortion services: the uninsured, and the working poor with little control over their schedules.

In other words, its prime targets are the state’s population majority: the poor, Blacks and people of color, particularly Latinas. Recent history shows this to be true. After the Texas abortion battle of 2014 forced many reproductive health clinics to close, Latinas were most impacted by the loss of services, according to an analysis of state data by the Dallas Morning News. The U.S. Supreme Court later struck down that law.

The new law, SB8, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a procedural issue allowed to go into effect—Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed the decision in her dissent as “a breathtaking act of defiance—of the Constitution, of this Court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas”— has been widely criticized as the end of a woman’s right to choose.

But if SB8 represents the loss of the ultimate choice, it is the pinnacle of choices lost to Latinas that went seemingly ignored or unconnected to the cause of reproductive rights. SB8 was built on lawsuits and decisions—victories achieved—over the Latina body that involved voting rights, border security, education and policing. And Latinas—who have positioned access to abortion within the multiple issues that intersect across their bodies—represent a formidable threat to the prevailing political structure.

Latinas, under siege for years

In many ways, the Texas Latina is an easy target. Economically, she is undervalued. Latinas here earn 44 cents to the dollar earned by white males. That’s less than any other racial/ethnic group and less than the national average for Latinas—54 cents, compared with 80 cents by white women. With 62 percent of Texas Latinos uninsured, she likely lacks health insurance in a state with the highest rate of uninsured. She is both essential—working frontline jobs—but marginal to an economic engine dependent on the oil and gas and technology industries.

But she persists, starting her own businesses, holding down several jobs, and enrolling in college at higher rates than Latinos. For those fighting their way out of poverty, the anti-choice stance of lawmakers undermines her. Texas lawmakers redirect federal funds for low-income people to Alternative to Abortion programs. Such policies set the stage for the pandemic fallout.

When the pandemic shot through the United States, Latinas experienced some of the worst economic devastation. Unemployment among Latinas exceeded other groups, and they had the highest rate of exit from the workforce. But she was deprived of the financial assistance that has broken the fall for others across the nation when Texas lawmakers cut off federal unemployment assistance long before it expired.

Few noticed or made the link between the assault on her reproductive rights and the ongoing effort to undermine her voting rights. In 2002, Republicans gained enough votes in the Texas legislature and unleashed gerrymandering warfare to dilute the power of her vote. In 2011, a battle over voting districts ensued, stretching across a decade, with a federal judge ruling that the state intentionally intended to dilute her political power for a shrinking white Republican class. Years later, the U.S. Supreme Court signed off on the maps that were constructed as the temporary fix.

But the assault didn’t end there. Texas passed a voter ID law and later attempted to purge some 100,000 people from its voting rolls, the majority Latino, arguing they were not actually citizens. In its recent voting restrictions law, the surveillance deployed on women seeking abortion services, and those helping them, extends to the voting booth. The new law, SB1, grants poll watchers expanded powers to monitor elections, raising fears of voter intimidation in a state where Latinos and Blacks were often kept away from the ballot box by poll tax and rifle barrel.

Through voter suppression and gerrymandering, Texas Republicans have tightened their grip on the electoral apparatus, clearing the way to their recent anti-choice victory. Since the 2010 election, some 22 states have adopted restrictions on both voting and abortion, according to an analysis by Rewire News.

Tejanas are without a reliable political party

The alarms sounding over the surveillance and vigilantism that Texas’ abortion ban licenses is not new to the Latina. Citizen militias roam large swaths of the Texas borderlands in the name of border security. She is often subjected to traffic stops by any one of the multiple agencies policing the borderlands, including a large deployment of state police. In 2018, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the state’s “show me your papers” law that allowed law enforcement officers and even campus police to inquire about the immigration status of anyone lawfully detained, including for traffic stops.

Within this world of surveillance and policing, she is without a reliable political party. Her representatives willingly sacrifice her reproductive rights. Democrats often support more border wall and border security, which seemingly have little bearing on her reproductive rights. The Democratic state senator from a mainly Latino border district with one of the highest rates of poverty in Texas attended the signing of the SB8 abortion law. Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. (D-Brownsville) also sponsored another bill, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed last week, that will limit access to abortion pills beyond federal restrictions.

In response to the SB8 law, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit alleging that shifting enforcement power to private citizens was a “scheme” designed to “evade judicial review.” Such absence of oversight and review is familiar to people on the Texas borderlands. Complaints by immigrant women that accuse Border Patrol officials of sexual assault largely go uninvestigated, according to an analysis by the American Immigration Council. Living within this climate of border security and impunity are Texas Latinas.

In the absence of a public history about Latinos in the United States, the Texas Latina is politically vulnerable. There is little knowledge of the long assault on Latinas’ bodies, from the forced sterilizations in California to the experimentation with birth control on Puerto Rican women. The history of her marginalization from the voting booth is largely ignored, the long fight to win the right to vote forgotten and without symbolic meaning. Discrimination against her lacks social or political currency. Indeed, Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion on an immigration case, chastised her fellow justices for failing to acknowledge anti-Latino sentiment embedded in the statements of ex-president Donald J. Trump. Assault on her, in essence, is rarely perceived as an assault on the nation, justice and equality.

“Assault on her, in essence, is rarely perceived as an assault on the nation, justice and equality”

From this seemingly marginalized position, this Latina represents a political threat. Across all social issues, Texas Latinas support more gun control, access to abortion, and less militarization of the border, meaning they are more progressive than Latino men. To be sure, some Texas Latinas oppose access to abortion and their vote aligns with the Republican platform. But at the ballot box, Latinas overwhelmingly supported Democrats in the last election at rates that exceeded Latino males.

Latinas organized their communities, were behind massive mobilizations that increased voter turnout in Texas, and were at the head of groups such as MiGente and the Texas Organizing Project. The essence of her true threat rests in a political outlook that synthesizes issues that are addressed as disparate and unrelated by many progressives and liberals.

Where others see the distinctive issues of immigration, economy, voting rights and reproductive rights affecting distinct constituencies, Texas Latina leaders have labeled a united assault. Less than two weeks after choices were lost for pregnant people, protestors at the Texas capitol declared a “cross movement” demonstration: The People vs. The State of Texas. Two days later, Lina Hidalgo, the county judge for Harris County, which includes Houston, and the county’s top administrator, dissected the latest Texas laws in a video posted online. Hidalgo expanded access to the voting booth in the last election with 24-hour and drive-through voting that increased voter turnout and rankled Texas Republicans. SB1 specifically eliminates policies adopted by Harris County.

In the video, Hidalgo described the Republican legislative agenda as “extreme” and “they’re taking this state back in time.” New gun laws that remove restrictions to gun ownership, she said, were a throwback to the Wild West. New voting laws were reminiscent of the days of Jim Crow. Restrictions on discussions about race and racism in the classroom are “like back in the day when we all had to pretend racism wasn’t a thing.” The latest abortion law represented a regression to days before Roe V. Wade. Hidalgo characterized the laws as an effort to undo progress while promoting a vigilante movement at voting sites, the doctor’s office and classrooms, pitting people against each other.

Through the eyes of Texas Latinas, the state is waging an assault on progress, democracy and community, and sees her as a threat because she transcends the world of disparate “issues” and identities to promote an ideology of unity and equity. And for that reason, Texas will do whatever it takes to contain her.

Additional links:
SB8 bill text
Timeframe for abortion is shorter
Impact on Latinas
Sterilization and experimentation on Latinas
Redistricting in Texas
The People vs. the State of Texas