Forced parenthood and failing safety nets: This is life in post-Roe America

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Mother Jones
@MotherJones
·
Follow
What do states that refuse to provide paid parental leave, didn’t expand Medicaid, score high on maternal mortality lists have in common? They're far more likely than other states to heavily restrict or ban abortion.

motherjones.com
Forced parenthood and failing safety nets: This is life in post-Roe America
The states with the strictest abortion laws are doing the least to help poor families. What could possibly go wrong?
8:00 AM · Aug 29, 2022

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/08/abortion-bans-states-social-safety-net-dobbs/


Melissa Kearse, a 38-year-old single mother of five, has never had an abortion. She never wanted one.

“I come from a very religious background,” she explains, “where my-body-my-choice is not necessarily my body and my choice.”

But in her home state of Georgia, any choice she did have was stripped away by the state’s conservative legislature, which in 2019 passed a trigger ban on abortion after six weeks gestation that took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this past June. Though Kearse is personally opposed to having an abortion, she is exasperated by Georgia’s call to meddle in this decision, particularly as someone who has struggled to provide for her family and been repeatedly let down by the state’s social welfare programs. “I don’t feel comfortable with somebody telling me what I can and cannot do if you’re not helping me provide,” she says. “If I got pregnant again, I would drown.”

The troubling irony is that Georgia and the 14 other states that have imposed the harshest abortion restrictions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision are the most ill-equipped to handle the consequences of forcing women to give birth. These states—all of which are controlled by Republican legislatures and most of which also have Republican governors—tend to rank among the lowest in the nation when it comes to maternal mortality, child wellness, food security, and access to affordable health care. Some of the states actively redistribute federal aid away from low-income parents—for which the aid was designed—and towards crisis pregnancy centers, which are organized by the anti-abortion movement to dissuade pregnant people from having abortions, often through misinformation.

Of the 15 states that have fully banned abortion or restricted it beyond six weeks gestation, none have paid parental leave policies. Seven have opted against accepting federal funds to expanding Medicaid eligibility. Seven rank in the lowest quartile for child wellness. Seven appear on the top-ten list of US states with the highest food insecurity frequency. Eight provide Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), the nation’s largest direct cash assistance program intended to help low-income families, to fewer than 10 percent of their impoverished residents, which is less than half the national average.

*snip*

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. We have to end this cruelty somehow.

Roe, Roe, Roe your vote
against theocracy!
Republicans revoke your rights
and kill democracy!

Donate to 38 House candidates: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217067267
Stick 'em up for a blue wave: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217078977

[crickets]

2. Just another example that the cruelty is the point. nt

[EnergizedLib]

3. No surprise

What is a surprise is that women in this country have something special in store for these oppressors. They’ll get their surprise on November 8.