According to Arizona state legislators some minority women abort fetuses because of their race. In 2011, Arizona passed a law prohibiting an abortion provider from performing an abortion on a woman who wants to abort her fetus because of its race and/or sex. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued Arizona arguing that this law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, because it stigmatizes minority women by suggesting that they discriminate against their fetuses (assuming that it is even possible to do that).
But just a few weeks ago, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the petitioners in the case, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF), their day in court. The Court rejected the appeal on standing even before getting to the constitutional issues, because the ACLU did not bring forth a woman who wanted to abort her fetus due to its race and/or sex. Perhaps because few (if any) such women exist.
It is true that the rate of abortion among African American women is five times higher than among Caucasian American women and for Latina women it is twice as high. Anti-abortion advocates argue that this occurs because abortion providers target minorities for abortion services in an attempt to reduce the number of people of color that are born. On the other hand, pro-choice advocates argue that the disproportionately higher rates are due to a lack of access to and failure to use contraception.
The logic of the Arizona race-selective ban is tortured because it is structured like its more popular cousin, the sex-selective abortion ban, which prohibits women from aborting their fetuses because of its sex. Sex-selective bans have been introduced in over half of the state legislatures in the United States and passed by eight states. On the other hand, Arizona is the only state in the United States that bans both race-selective and sex-selective abortion; eight other states and the United States Congress have considered and rejected race-selective abortion bans (although the majority of the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of both race-selective and sex-selective bans in 2012).
Proponents of sex-selective abortion bans argue that Asian Americans discriminate against the sex of their fetuses and this causes a disproportionate number of abortions of female fetuses. They further incorrectly argue that there are "missing women" in the United States. They then apply this logic to race to argue that race discrimination causes a disproportionate number of minority fetuses to be aborted.
However, the analogy falls apart when the actors with the purported racist and sexist intent are brought into the picture. In the case of sex-selective abortion bans, proponents argue that the sexist beliefs of Asian American parents cause them to obtain the abortions. To the extent sex-selective abortions are occurring in the United States, it would appropriate to argue that they occur because of a parent's desires for a child of a particular sex. On the other hand, it makes no sense to argue that women abort their fetuses because of a particular racial preference of their fetus. Yet, the Arizona law assumes that minority women abort their fetuses because they do not desire to have minority children.
The disproportionate rate of abortions among minority communities in the United States is an important concern that should be investigated, discussed, and solved. The Arizona law is not intended to do that. While it is unlikely that anyone will ever be prosecuted under the Arizona law, the statute itself is offensive. It also strains the patient-doctor relationship. By denying the appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has missed an opportunity to strike down state laws that use racial and gender equality as a ruse to restrict abortion rights.