[csusbpeace] It’s More Dangerous to Be Pregnant in Post-Roe America

From: "raccoon" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ("bigraccoon1")
To: "CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2023 11:32:37 -0800

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It’s More Dangerous to Be Pregnant in Post-Roe America

January 25, 2023

I remember the first time I heard the maxim “abortion is health care.” I
thought it was promising, in terms of messaging, but ultimately a bit
hyperbolic. That was before last June, when the Trumpified Supreme Court
overturned
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/fall-of-roe-rise-of-republican-orthodoxy-at-supreme-court>
Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision in which abortion was enshrined into
law. The fallout from the right-wing majority eliminating a constitutional
right to an abortion has profoundly hurt women, hamstrung doctors, and
overwhelmed hospitals. “Because it’s such a pithy and memorable phrase people
think it must not be true,” NARAL’s Angela Vasquez-Giroux told me, “but
abortion is actually health care.”

This past weekend marked the 50th anniversary of Roe, which, instead of a
time of celebration, was marred by marches
<https://www.npr.org/2023/01/20/1150276020/march-for-life-post-roe-anti-abortion-activists>—because
the antiabortion movement remains determined to further erode Americans’
rights—and misery, as women across the country face far more restrictions
than a year ago. At least 13 states
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html>
have banned abortion since Roe was officially overturned. This loss of bodily
autonomy on the federal level has created medical disasters for women all
throughout the country.

For instance, Idaho woman Carmen Broesder said she was denied dilation
<https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/idaho-woman-shares-19-day-miscarriage-tiktok-states/story?id=96363578>
and curettage, or D&C, despite the clear medical need. “Why should I get to
death’s door to get help?” she asked in a series of TikTok videos. In some of
these abortion desert states, doctors are afraid to perform D&C for
miscarriages
<https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/20/health/doctors-weigh-litigation-miscarriage-care/index.html>
out of fear they will be prosecuted. Katrina Green, an emergency room
physician in Nashville, told
<https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-business/doctors-fearing-legal-blowback-are-denying-life-saving-abortions>
Bloomberg Law, “Where is the line where we can intervene? If we intervene
too early, then a lawyer might come after us.” The internet is awash in
stories of women unable to get treatment for ectopic pregnancies
<https://www.statnews.com/2022/07/05/a-scary-time-fear-of-prosecution-forces-doctors-to-choose-between-protecting-themselves-or-their-patients/>
and miscarriages
<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/17/health/abortion-miscarriage-treatment.html>.

But the problem isn’t just with individual doctors unable or unwilling to
treat women, but hospital systems are being challenged in new ways since the
end of Roe. “There’s a panic happening all over the South now that we are
seven months in. The first wave of people denied abortions are starting to
get near a point of giving birth, and it will crash our hospitals down here
once it happens,” said Robin Marty, operations director of the West Alabama
Women's Center and author of
<https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Post-Roe-America-Robin-Marty/dp/1609809491?ots=1&tag=vanfai0d-20&linkCode=w50>
Handbook for a Post-Roe America. “In Alabama, we are seeing patients who
have given up on trying to get abortions and are giving up even trying to
find doctors to help them through their pregnancies. They are coming to us
knowing we can offer prenatal care, and choosing to stay even though we can’t
do deliveries, deciding it’s better to have prenatal care and take their
chance on whoever is on duty at the hospital when they go into labor than
risk not being able to find anyone at all. Right now we are still at the
point where a lot of people could go to other states to get abortions.”

A hospital system stretched thin from three years of pandemic, alongside an
epidemic of rural hospital closures
<https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2022-09-08-aha-report-rural-hospital-closures-threaten-patient-access-care>,
is a recipe for disaster for the American South when it comes to maternal
fetal health. America already has
<https://tcf.org/content/commentary/worsening-u-s-maternal-health-crisis-three-graphs/>
“a maternal mortality rate several times higher than other high-income
countries,” including nearly three times higher than France, the next country
on the list, according to the Century Foundation. This tragic situation will
surely only get worse in post-Roe America, especially for communities of
color where the maternal mortality rate for Black women is nearly three times
<https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2020/maternal-mortality-rates-2020.htm>
higher than white women, according to the CDC. In case you were wondering if
American health care is racist.

Now doctors are even more worried about treating pregnant women. This
post-Roe health care crisis “started cascading” in recent months as “the
clinics filled, and the waits got longer,” Marty told me. “Now is a crisis,
but six months from now? That will be the catastrophe.” Or as NARAL’s
Vasquez-Giroux put it to me, “We all knew this would impact women who were
seeking abortion care, but we weren’t prepared for how it would impact
America as a whole. What it really underlines is that it’s actually not safe
to be pregnant in America.”

Despite the damage to maternal fetal health and the underlying anxiety among
doctors, Republican governors have seized on abortion as yet another culture
war crusade. Abortion, like bullying trans kids and banning books, has become
a way for Republican governors to prove their MAGA bona fides despite the
fact that even Mr. MAGA himself, Donald Trump, seems to realize how unpopular
the assault on abortion rights is with the public. After the GOP’s poor
showing in the midterms, Trump “truthed
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/03/donald-trump-abortion-midterms-republicans>”
his frustration: “It was the ‘abortion issue’, poorly handled by many
Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions, even in
the case of rape, incest, or life of the mother, that lost large numbers of
voters.” But somehow this has not permeated the party, with Virginia governor
and red-vest-wearer Glenn Youngkin pushing for a 15-week ban
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/22/politics/roe-v-wade-abortion-what-matters> in
purple state Virginia.

Republicans find themselves in an intractable position. Banning abortion is
unpopular even in red states like Kansas and Kentucky, as recent ballot
initiatives
<https://www.thecut.com/2022/11/how-abortion-rights-won-in-kentucky-and-kansas.html>
demonstrated
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/11/republicans-abortion-ballot-measures-ohio>,
and such severe restrictions are likely to find even less support the more
people see videos and hear horror stories of women unable to get the medical
care they need. But in order to appeal to the right-wing base, these
Republicans will keep taking a hard line on abortion.

Ron DeSantis, for one, has suggested
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/desantis-hints-at-support-for-6-week-abortion-ban-in-florida_n_639cb059e4b0aeb2ace38ab1>
he’d support an abortion ban at around six weeks; Florida currently bans
abortions after 15 weeks, though the law is being challenged
<https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/23/florida-supreme-court-15-week-abortion-ban-00079123>
in court. Speaking in Florida on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris used
DeSantis’s words against him, “Can we truly be free if so-called leaders
claim to be—I quote, ‘on the vanguard of freedom’ while they dare to restrict
the rights of the American people and attack the very foundations of freedom?”

Not even a year since Roe was overturned, we’re seeing terrible
reverberations, things women didn’t even know to worry about a year ago.
Republicans thought they’d win over evangelicals but that group won’t ever be
satisfied despite their wildly unpopular Supreme Court victory. (In June
2022, polling showed 6 in 10 Americans were
<https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-in-ten-americans-say-abortion-should-be-legal-in-all-or-most-cases-2/>
pro-choice.) The theme for the latest “March for Life” was “Next Steps:
marching forward into a post-Roe America
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/20/politics/march-for-life-2023-abortion/index.html>.”
If anything, the anti-choice crowd has become more emboldened, with former
vice president Mike Pence agitating for a national ban
<https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-pence-national-abortion-ban-lindsey-graham-1234592588/>
since minutes after Roe was overturned. Clearly, the GOP’s “states’ rights”
argument has always been a complete scam.

What’s become clear over the past seven months is that post-Roe America isn’t
in the middle of an abortion crisis, it’s in the throes of a health care
crisis. And it’s only going to get worse.

[csusbpeace] It’s More Dangerous to Be Pregnant in Post-Roe America

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