Damn, Texas Sure Is Killing A Lot Of Pregnant Women
Maternal deaths have increased by 56 percent since 2019.
Today in unfortunate and unsurprising news — a recent analysis conducted by the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI) found that maternal deaths in Texas increased by 56 percent from 2019 to 2022, as compared with 11 percent nationwide during that same time period.
“There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” GEPI President Nancy L. Cohen told NBC News. “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.”
“Texas, I fear, is a harbinger of what’s to come in other states,” she added.
This is because, due to SB8, Texas has had its abortion ban in action longer than any other state.
Now, as we’ve repeatedly mentioned, prior to the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, there were states where abortion was just as inaccessible for most women as if it had been illegal. However, the bans have created a number of additional issues beyond just abortion being inaccessible. They’ve led to doctors and hospitals refusing to provide miscarriage care, being unsure if mothers are close enough to death to warrant medical intervention or not. It’s led to ob-gyns fleeing or not doing their residencies there to begin with, which itself has led to the closure of labor and delivery wards in hospitals. So there are more pregnancies but fewer people to deliver the babies safely.
The data from GEPI shows that while maternal mortality obviously spiked everywhere during the pandemic, it’s remained far higher in Texas compared to where it was in 2019.
That’s not great news!
It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of states with very high infant mortality rates are states where abortion is banned.
That is also not great news.
This new information dovetails quite nicely with an analysis from CNN that shows that Republicans are not doing any of the things they said they would do in order to make things easier on those they are forcing to give birth against their will. In Missouri, even a Republican couldn’t get a bill for tax credits for child care to pass, but they did manage to cut funding to the remaining Planned Parenthoods in the state that were no longer involved with abortion care. In Iowa, promised bills supporting adoption and the right to contraception never got anywhere either.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson has long abandoned his plans for “Unborn Child Support” in his home state of Louisiana.
This is not about life. It’s never, ever been about “life.” If these people truly gave a shit about “life” they would not make it so doctors are not sure what care they are allowed to give patients suffering a miscarriage or pregnancy gone wrong. If they cared about “life” they’d be pushing for universal pregnancy healthcare so that no one had to go broke just from having a baby (it’s very, very expensive to be pregnant and give birth!). Hell, if they cared about life, they’d be pushing for single payer, universal health care, period. If they cared about “the children” they’d be the ones pushing for universal school lunch. They’re not. They never are.
They do not care if women die. They do not care if children die. They never did.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
>> They do not care if women die. They do not care if children die. They never did. <<
Yep.
We need some number of people -- not all mind you, but some -- who work in local news to print headlines or pay for billboards or broadcast segments in which they assert that the relevant politicians actually WANT children and mothers to die, making the argument that if you know the result of your policy is going to be death and you choose to go forward with hat policy, then you wanted those deaths.
Now, those people who make that argument will be immediately called out as biased and extreme and vile snark mobbists, BUT the argument will be out there, which allows the weasel press to say, "Well, I know you don't want moms to die, and you know yo don't want moms to die, but how do you, Mr. Politician, deal with this optics problem now that it exists? Are you willing to actually provide child care support to prove that you don't hate women? If not, what are you going to do, policy wise, to address this political problem you have?"
And sure, you and I and every regular reader of Wonkette will vomit at the cowardice of those more mainstream "journalists," but it is this outside-inside team-up, where one group sacrifices their own credibility (and sometimes income) to get an issue out there, while the other waffles and weasels around norms to avoid accusing anyone with actual power or money of anything that might actually be bad, but still keeps the new question in play as "optics concerns" or whatever is the necessarily politic framing.
I don't think our media has to have such terrible norms, but the point is that **whatever** the norms happen to be in a given culture, you need a combination of outsiders and insiders if you're going to change the status quo. After all, it wouldn't be the status quo if power and money didn't support it, so dislodging the status quo means fighting power and money, which isn't easy and requires a lot of leverage.
Outsiders can provide the fulcrum which insiders can use to establish leverage. More outsiders need to join with Robyn, and even frame things in the more extreme way. Robyn asserts that they don't value life. I assert that they value death.
And while I sacrifice some credibility in doing so, I was never going to be the person in the inner sanctum negotiating the new Texas maternal health bill anyway, so I have credibility to spare.
What's the worst that can happen? I live on the street in a cardboard box despised by Texas Republicans? I don't want that, but I don't think it's that likely and I also don't think it's as severe a fate as hundreds of women needlessly dying, so fuck it. Take my credibility. Please.
You know how the Republicans plan to deal with this, don't you?
Make Texas stop counting maternal deaths.