Tracy Young said you can’t be a CEO or a mother without reproductive rights. Decisions about whether and when to have children affect women’s labor force participation. Access to contraception and abortion also plays an important role in women’s economic success.
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It may be common sense to many women, but Tracy Young decided to say it out loud.
“As a mother and CEO of two companies, I have experienced firsthand how important reproductive rights are to my life,” she posted on LinkedIn last month.
Young, who studied construction engineering, is the co-founder and CEO of two startups: Plan Grid, a construction software company, and TigerEye, an AI analyst on the go-to-market team.
“I’m surprised that we’re having this conversation in 2024. One of the reasons I wrote that essay is because there’s so much debate,” Young told Business Insider. Ta. “I can say with certainty that I would not have been able to make it through this journey as founder and CEO without the reproductive rights that have been granted to me.”
Young’s story highlights what is at stake for women who lack access to reproductive health care, and how this issue can impact not only women in the workplace but the economy as a whole. are.
Alina Salganikov, senior vice president and director of the Women’s Health Policy Program at KFF, a health policy research institute, said things like access to contraception and abortion are “game changers” for women’s ability to participate in the workforce.
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“Being able to control whether and when to have children makes a huge difference in one’s life, personal life, as well as career options and education,” Salganikov told BI.
The issue is now top of mind two weeks after the presidential election. Several states will have abortion access on the ballot.
The issue has largely been a win-win situation for Democrats since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending federal legalization of abortion. Even typically conservative-leaning states have voted to legalize abortion.
How reproductive medicine helped Young’s career
Young knew she wanted to be a parent, but the timing wasn’t right while she was attending college, working in construction or starting a company, she said. .
“Birth control has helped me time my pregnancy and time my readiness,” Young said. “When I was building my first startup, leading my first time as CEO, and doing the biggest job I’d ever done, it just wasn’t the right time for me.”
Young and her husband welcomed their first child in 2018, and Young said she has “matured as a CEO and as a leader.”
“I felt more capable,” she said. “At that point, it felt right.”
Access to reproductive health care again made a difference for Young when she suffered a miscarriage at work during a subsequent pregnancy. Young said a doctor in California gave her misoprostol. Misoprostol is one of two common drugs doctors use to treat abortions and miscarriages. She also underwent surgery.
“The doctors had no hesitation in giving me the treatment they knew I needed,” Young said. “With the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, many states now have strict limits on prescribing medications given to me as treatment.”
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and policy organization, more than half of U.S. states currently have limits on when abortion can be legally performed during pregnancy, and 13 states have some Abortion is completely prohibited, with some exceptions, and access to care is impeded, with some exceptions. Non-profit organization.
Sarganikov said refusing an abortion has downstream effects on a woman’s economic potential, affecting everything from her education level to her ability to advance in her career.
For example, the University of California, San Francisco’s ongoing Turnaway Study found that denying women abortion care increases their chances of falling into poverty, unemployment, and other economic hardships. Similarly, a recently published study by the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality found that restricting access to abortion “poses significant risks to the well-being and economic security of women, especially low-income women.” .
The consequences harm women and the world at large, Young said.
“There are a lot of problems in the world, and we want maybe half the brains of the population to contribute to solving these really difficult problems,” Young said. “i will do it.”
