Does It Count As A 'Post-Birth Abortion' When DeSantis Takes Away A Sick Child's Healthcare?
Just asking questions!
This week, Florida’s six-week ban on abortion will go into effect — banning abortion before many will even find out that they are pregnant. This means that many who cannot necessarily afford to have a child or afford to have another child will definitely be forced to have that child anyway. It also means that it will definitely be very illegal to have an abortion by the time doctors are able to discover fatal fetal anomalies or other health conditions “incompatible with life,” or conditions that will only allow a baby to live a for a very short and painful amount of time, while also requiring a whole lot of very, very expensive medical interventions.
Just as an off the top of my Google search example, one Florida woman, with good health insurance, whose child was born in a breached birth and required two months in the NICU, ended up owing the hospital over half a million dollars. Of course, the hospital very helpfully offered to allow her to pay it off in $45,843.73 installments every month for a year.
Why do I bring this up? Well, one of the other things that the DeSantis administration has done, outside of banning abortion after six weeks, is to kick over 22,500 children off of their health insurance.
God, they really, really do just love the children, don’t they?
Let’s rewind a little shall we?
Back in September of last year, President Joe Biden signed the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which contained the “continuous eligibility clause.” This allows children who get their health insurance through CHIP to stay on it so long as their parents have paid at least one of the monthly premiums within the last year.
Ron DeSantis and the Republicans of Florida did not like this at all! Like, they really, really did not like it. Thus, they have been kicking kids right off of KidCare, the state’s CHIP program, if their parents miss even one payment.
Via The Guardian:
Last week, the administration of the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, challenged the rule in federal court in Tampa, arguing it makes Chip an entitlement program that illegally overrides a state law requiring monthly payment of premiums.
But it has chosen not to wait for a ruling before continuing to separate children from coverage. Figures from the Florida Health Justice Project show there were 5,552 removals in the month to 1 April, following 5,097 in March, 5,147 in February, and 6,780 in January.
Florida argues the numbers include children ageing out or moving into other coverage, and that “disenrollment has been consistent at this level for years”. Notably, the monthly average so far this year is more than 1,500 higher than the whole of 2023.
Democratic Florida Congresswoman Kathy Castor, who says that multiple families have contacted her after their children were cut off from medical care, has been speaking out against DeSantis’s actions. She has called it “enormously cruel and a crisis of callousness by our governor and state of Florida who are willing to sacrifice sick children for their political aims,” which is accurate.
Via The Guardian:
“In the end, it saves everyone money, and saves families’ heartache when young children can stay healthy and well. But Ron DeSantis loves a lawsuit. Florida is the only state in the country that is so upset that children are going to get healthcare that he’s suing in federal court.”
Castor said one family she had spoken with had a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler who was born three months prematurely.
“She is fed exclusively through a tube. She has extreme developmental delays and requires 24-hour nursing care,” she said.
“They said since birth she has faced challenges including five months in neonatal intensive care, hernia surgery, air tube surgeries and seizures, and ongoing treatment. So the state now has ended her coverage. It’s heartbreaking, it’s cruel and it’s unnecessary.”
“In some liberal states,” Ron DeSantis said in an interview with Jake Tapper last July, “you actually have post-birth abortions, and I think that’s wrong.”
Oh, really? You think that’s wrong, do you?
Well, the good news for DeSantis is that there are not, in fact, post-birth abortions in liberal states — because that would be homicide and homicide is illegal. That’s not a thing and repeating it over and over again does not make it so. The bad news is that this policy that he is so very excited about that he will file a lawsuit to defend it is going to kill children — which, I suppose, one could very well define as an actual post-birth, nonconsensual abortion.
I mean, if we’re going to ascribe ridiculous and made up positions and policies to one another, this one is certainly more grounded in reality. Children like the infant described by Castor could very well die because of this policy. That is a fact. Sure, it could also just send their parents into bankruptcy and extreme poverty for the rest of their lives, but that’s not exactly good for a sick child either.
Like so many other hypocritical “pro-lifers” before him, Ron DeSantis is perfectly willing to let children die, so long as they are born first. It’s almost as if it’s not that he cares about children at all, but that he enjoys punishing their mothers for their perceived sins, whether that is having sex or being poor.
Personally, I think that DeSantis ought to consider taking a little personal responsibility here.
PREVIOUSLY:
[retired RN who has SEEN the post-partum suffering and taken heartbreakingly compromised infants OFF the ventilator and disconnected ALL of the various tubes and lines and placed those too precious, too compromised for this world tiny bundles into the arms of their devastated parents SMASHES a candleholder...]
These are the results from voting R and Project 2025 is Handmaids tale come true. You think Orwell was bad this shit is worse. I hope you non voting, purity voting and R voting asswipes are happy, you fucking sociopaths. I hope you get everything you heap on others tenfold.
I will forever be pissed off about losing Roe when WE FUCKING HANDED IT TO YOU. YOU DID THIS YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS. Yeah I'm in a fucking mood today.