Issue 54 • JUNE 5, 2023
PRESENTED BY THE KAUFFMAN FOUNDATION
👋 Good morning, and welcome to The Yappie’s AAPI politics briefing — your guide to the policy news and activism affecting Asian Americans + Pacific Islanders. S
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— Edited by Shawna Chen and Mary Yang
THE BIG STORY
People protest at a Stop Abortion Bans rally in St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo courtesy of Lorie Shaull via Flickr.
AAPIs face knowledge gap with medication abortion amid “community-related” barriers, study finds
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A new report has found that nearly half of Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Hawaiians have limited knowledge on how to access medication abortion—more commonly referred to as abortion pills, a method that has grown exponentially in demand since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
📃 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
💊 The study, which examined AAPIs’ abortion knowledge, access, and attitudes with a focus on medication abortion, revealed a variety of obstacles that make it difficult for them to access abortions—including language barriers, legal restrictions, high costs of care, and cultural stigma around sexual and reproductive health.
Medication abortion, a method that typically consists of taking mifepristone and misoprostol to end a pregnancy, accounts for over half of all abortions in the U.S., but 47% of AAPIs did not know where to access medication abortion if they needed it, according to the study published by the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) and Ibis Reproductive Health.
40% of respondents said they had no prior knowledge about the safety of medication abortion, and a little over a third said they had not heard or did not know if they had heard of medication abortion.
📣 The findings reinforce advocates’ concern about the way many AAPI families tiptoe around the “hush-hush” subject. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) herself has spoken about how her mother didn’t know about her abortion until she disclosed it publicly 22 years later. “Some of it was because as an immigrant from a culture that deeply values children and in a society that still stigmatizes abortion, suicide, and mental health needs, I felt shame that I never should have felt,” she said in a September 2021 House committee hearing.
“It is important to send the message out that it is okay to talk about this and that there will be acceptance,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-California), told Hannah Zhihan Jiang in a 2021 interview for The Yappie as the Supreme Court was reviewing Texas’ six-week abortion ban.
📊 Few studies on abortion include AAPI-specific data, and even fewer disaggregate data based on AAPI subgroups. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention itself still categorize AAPIs as “Other” in its annual surveillance reports on abortion.
This lack of research has obscured many disparities. A 2021 study found that the abortion rate among Asian women in New York City was 12.6 per 1,000 women, a figure higher than other racial and ethnic groups. But disaggregating this data by country of origin revealed that Indian women’s abortion rates were approximately two to six times higher than other Asian subgroups, while U.S.-born Asian women were more likely to have abortions rates were higher for immigrant Asian women.
“Evidence also indicates that Asian women were more than twice as likely to choose medication abortion over other methods since they felt it was safer,” NAPAWF and Ibis’ report notes.
🚨 Caveat: While the study includes disaggregated data, its authors acknowledged that only 1% of survey respondents identified as Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, further highlighting the need for more targeted research.
“With bans and restrictions to abortion care increasing across the country, AANHPI communities need more culturally sophisticated and language-appropriate information on sexual and reproductive health issues, and specifically about abortion,” the report says.
NAPAWF’s interim executive director Isra Pananon also told NBC News that existing research often fails to account for the specific needs of AAPI women. “We definitely need to do more. More studies, more advocacy.”
🏥 The current state of access: With the fall of Roe, at least 20 states now restrict or ban abortions, Axios’ Oriana Gonzalez reports. Several—including Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi—have no exceptions for rape or incest.
These bans disproportionately impact people of color, who comprise around 60% of people who get abortions, according to Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist at the University of California, San Francisco.
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center has also warned that immigrants are at particular risk having to choose between an abortion or U.S. residency, Mary Yang writes for The Guardian.
Other complications, such as cultural stigma and language barriers, already contribute to unequal access to reproductive health care, The Yappie’s Katelyn Monaco and Mary Yang note. A post-Roe America could further exacerbate these disparities.
Over 70% of Asian adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases compared to a U.S. national average of 61%, per a 2021 Pew Research study.
— By
Wendy Ying Lau
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Katrina Pham
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AAPI NATION
CATCH UP
Nikki Haley speaks with the media in Arizona in 2020. Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore.
📈 NUMBER OF THE WEEK
39
That’s the percentage of foreign-born Asian Americans who identify as or lean Republican, according to findings from Pew Research. In contrast, a quarter of U.S.-born Asians report the same affiliation.
Here's what else is happening across America...
Thousands of Guam residents remain without power or running water more than a week after Typhoon Mawar made landfall, The Washington Post’s Anumita Kaur reports. Uncertainty and frustration have sparked criticism among residents who question the efficacy of federal support as it may be weeks until utilities are fully restored.
“What a shame that FEMA is on Guam, and only today, they’re going to get water for the people … On the sixth day of recovery, we’re going to get water from FEMA,” Jesse Alig, mayor of Piti, testified during an emergency session of the Guam Legislature.
“It showed the world how AAPI artists are equally competitive in this music industry while we're still being true to our culture, representing our island life, heritage, and ʻohana,” Grammy-nominated producer Kimie Miner, who is Native Hawaiian, said in an interview with Hawaii Public Radio’s Cassie Ordonio.
Newfound fame: Tongi’s self-composed track “I’ll Be Seeing You,” which he dedicated to his late father, has since soared to No. 1 on Billboard.
🎗️ Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders between the ages of 20 and 49 have the highest cancer mortality rates in comparison to other racial groups within the same age bracket, according to new research from the National Cancer Institute. Unequal access to health care and “suboptimal” cancer treatments are likely contributing to these disparities. Meanwhile, Asians have the lowest cancer death rates across every age group.
“Policies aimed at equitable cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment, as well as disaggregation of data for racial/ethnic subpopulations are needed to address disparities in cancer mortality across racial/ethnic groups,” researchers wrote.
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— By
Rachel Lee
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