Red states would rather let a patient die than let her terminate a dangerous pregnancy. And they’re barely pretending otherwise.

Red states would rather let a patient die than let her terminate a dangerous pregnancy. And they’re barely pretending otherwise.

For many years before S.B. 8 passed in Texas and was then swept into existence by the Supreme Court, and before Dobbs ushered in a more formal regime of forced childbirth six months later, the groups leading the charge against reproductive rights liked to claim that they loved pregnant women and only wanted them to be safe and cozy, stuffed chock-full of good advice and carted around through extra-wide hallways for safe, sterile procedures in operating rooms with only the best HVAC systems.

Then Dobbs came down and within minutes it became manifestly clear that these advocates actually viewed pregnant people as the problem standing in the way of imaginary, healthy babies—and that states willing to privilege fetal life would go to any and all lengths to ensure that actual patients’ care, comfort, informed consent, and very survival would be subordinate.

We are only beginning to understand the extent to which pregnant women are dying and will continue to die due to denials of basic maternal health care, candid medical advice, and adequate treatment.

  • @Drivebyhaiku
    1•1 year ago

    No one woud thank you for it. There’s plenty that could be done to lower the bar for people to embrace being a parent but it’s instinctual to not bring offspring into the world when you are facing precarity. A lot of mammals will outright murder their offspring if they don’t like their chances. Not enough resources and way too much stress and perceived danger is a recipe for instinctual abandonment. Once a society sees something like that too often it gets callous. A future where you force people into greater precarity isn’t the answer and adoption isn’t much of a solution. The mental trauma from adoption has known long term effects that tend to make mothers of unwanted children who opt for that genuinely less resilient in other spheres. Flooding the system with children there are no resources to bring up well also exacerbates issues of community wide antisocial problems, mental and physical illnesses. It is far better to allow individuals and families to make their own judgements about what they are capable of doing.

    You want a culture shift, eliminate precarity. Social safety nets, good community resources, affordable housing, family sustaining wages that allow enough time and energy to be alloted to childcare. We are in a situation where the future is pretty much looking like doom and drudgery with little relief in sight. Nobody has retirement savings anymore, climate change is visible, lots of people are only a bad month away from being homeless and jobs are getting less rewarding as we go on and rates of burnout are skyrocketing. Now is not the time to add more babies into that mix, people will go literally fucking insane and historically speaking desperation and actual not-a-fetus infantcide are real good friends