The mainstream pro-choice movement has backed itself into a corner. By focusing on abortion as a personal choice and demanding its protection based on a constitutional right to privacy, it has created a heavily individualized paradigm for pro-choice discourse. The argument may be appealing in a courtroom — though not all courtrooms, as the reversal of Roe v. Wade indicates — but it lacks the collective valence necessary to inspire a united mass movement for reproductive justice. Notably, it leaves little room for a discussion of the tangible economic consequences of limiting the reproductive options for half of the population.

Now that the right to abortion is no longer federally protected, and abortion access is vanishing in red states, it’s time to reverse course and position reproductive health care as an economic issue. This shouldn’t be too be difficult, as the facts on the ground support the connection. A recent report written by Asha Banerjee from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) provides a new, detailed look into the economic consequences of state level abortion bans. Using five economic security metrics — the minimum wage, unionization rates, unemployment insurance rates, Medicaid expansion, and incarceration rates — the report concludes that abortion bans compound economic inequality.

Denial of abortion care should be understood as one of many intentional state policies that economically hurt workers, not a disconnected issue of privacy or religion. The states that have banned or restricted access to abortion have also engaged in decades of economic disempowerment, policies that have especially disadvantaged poor and working-class people and people of color. According to Banerjee, these states “have intentionally constructed an economic policy architecture defined by weak labor standards, underfunded and purposefully dysfunctional public services, and high levels of incarceration.”