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First States to Enact Abortion Bans Have One Thing in Common (The Daily Beast)
SUMMARY: In the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Americans have been forced to reckon with the utter disaster that’s been created in the 20 U.S. states that have banned or restricted abortion access.
And things are only getting worse, Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, reveals on this week’s episode of The New Abnormal.
…Yet despite polls showing that abortion access has become more popular than ever in the United States, the opposition to women’s health care continues.
“The states that were the quickest to enact abortion bans are the same states with the worst rates of maternal mortality,” Timmaraju explains.
Indiana–which has the third-highest maternal mortality rate among all reporting states–became the first state to pass an abortion ban after Roe v. Wade fell in late June 2022. Other states, including Missouri and Alabama, banned abortion through existing trigger laws that were set to take effect once a decision striking Roe came down.
Alabama’s most recent state-specific maternal mortality rate was 36.4 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2018—again, one of the highest in the country.
She adds that along with maternal mortality rates, the states also lack paid family leave and “have no childcare infrastructure that are generally terrible in terms of environmental protections and clean water and air. So these are not conditions in which anyone wants to choose to raise a family or has the conditions to have a family that would thrive.”
MY TAKE: In the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, I’ve been living in a perpetual state of shock. May Gallup polls show 85% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in at least certain circumstances, and 69% believe abortion should broadly be legal in the first three months of a pregnancy, which is a record high. About 57% agree that the Court decision was “bad for the country.”
Yet, here we are. We have 20 states enacting severe abortion restrictions. We have presidential candidates wanting even stricter limitations. Candidate Mike Pence is proposing a national 15-week abortion ban (“Pence on abortion limits: ‘We just can’t rest or relent’”).
For those actually concerned about life: the rate of deaths from maternal causes has been steadily rising for years. In 2018, it was 658 women. In 2021, 1,205 women died. That’s nearly double the number of deaths in just three years. The US maternal death rate for 2021 was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births. The rate for Black women was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, while the rate for White women was 26.6 per 100,000. That’s 2.6 times more likely to die if she’s Black. This racial disparity may be why certain states don’t seem to care as much.
Here are the states where women are more likely to die from childbirth (starting with the worst state): Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Georgia, etc. (You can see the pattern: states with poor education, a weak economy, but strong racism have the highest death rates.) Florida’s maternal death rate is 26.30, while “woke” California is the safest state in the nation, with 10.10. Probably something DeSantis won’t mention in his stump speech.
The anti-abortion campaign is the largest suppression of civil rights in the nation’s history. Women make up 50.4% of the U.S. population and still face daily discrimination that can be life-threatening. This isn’t merely an “agree to disagree” issue or “a matter of opinion.” The antiabortion stance is not based on science or logic or even the history of human rights. It’s a position that lacks merit, consistency, or constitutional standing. I know proponents of banning abortion think they’re being moral, but they are actually the opposite. They think they’re strengthening the country, but they’re weakening it. Not one antiabortionist could stand up to any scrutiny of their arguments without, in the end, having to default to religious faith.
Our Constitution protects the practice of faith, not the forcing of faith on others. In fact, we are also protected from that. It is vital that in the next election, we make that irrevocably clear.