The Latest Wishful Thinking Is That We Will “Just Get Over It”
The overturn of Roe v. Wade has brought the worst, and I mean the *worst* forced birthers into the limelight, but maybe that’s better. Just because they weren’t openly identifying themselves doesn’t mean they weren’t there, sowing the seeds of destruction all along.
Take Texas, for example. It’s not bad enough that they crafted legislation that turns neighbor against neighbor, family member against family member, friend against friend, and healthcare workers against patients with a bounty on women who might seek an abortion; now “Texas' health department will miss the deadline for the state's first major update on pregnancy-related deaths in nine years”. The Houston Chronicle.
Now why, I wonder, would Texas want to withhold maternal mortality rates in the wake of Dobbs? Couldn’t be because women are dying in even greater numbers than they usually do in Texas because of the draconian abortion laws, could it?
Certain persons claim the delay is necessary - the legislature needs the most up-to-date information before they address the problem. Except that they know what the problem is, and they don’t need “the latest numbers” to address it. They’ve known for a long time. The root of the problem - discrimination against women, particularly women of color, and particularly poor women of color - hasn’t changed. What likely *has* changed since Texas made abortion a non-option for women who can’t leave the state to get one is the extent of the damage, and the deaths must have increased dramatically for Abbott and his minions to want to withhold the numbers until after the election.
The Texas Medical Association says Byzantine access to healthcare is a major component of the problem: “Many of these women end up not getting prenatal care – not because they didn’t try, but because they had too many barriers in the way to get there . . . [the][Medicaid application] process can take over 30 days from the time you figure out you’re pregnant. Then, you have to call different [physician] offices and hope they take your specific Medicaid plan. If you don’t find out that you’re pregnant until after eight weeks, which is often normal, then you’re already 12 weeks [pregnant] by the time you get approved by Medicaid – and that’s if everything went smoothly, which is usually not the case . . . [t]he upshot is that many pregnant women first see a physician at 20 weeks into their pregnancy.”
Twenty weeks. Halfway through the pregnancy with no medical advice, no assistance, no support, and, depending on the woman’s age, between 15% and 50% of them will have miscarried. With no medical intervention. Seems like a recipe for disaster to me, and the withholding of abortion as healthcare seems to have made it worse, right Texas?
Texas ranks *last* among the 50 states for “access to high quality prenatal and maternal healthcare”, and now they are certainly among the most aggressive states in forcing women to give birth against their will. Who thinks that isn’t increasing the maternal death rate? What’s that? No one? Of course no one. Why else would they “miss a deadline” that allows them to hold back the maternal death rate until after the midterms?
Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc actually gave public voice to the opinion that women should just “get over it” with regard to bodily autonomy. What I wouldn’t give for a shortage of perfect examples of privileged old white men spouting their ignorant, egocentric tripe. Well, I have news for Mr. Bolduc and everyone like him. We will not “get over it”. We will *never* “get over it”. For the first time in American history, we the citizens just lost a Constitutional right, one that made us safer and healthier. Women are more than half the population, more than half the professionals in the economic marketplace, and we are steadily gaining ground in every aspect of life and power in the U.S. Enjoy your Swan Song. Our name is Legion. Get over *that*.