Yes, we’ve become Gilead.
Why do Republican lawmakers think it’s just fine to force women to have children they don’t want without providing the healthcare pregnant women need to survive childbirth? The shameful reality of the laws they’re passing is this: the state requires you to have a child conceived without your planning or permission, then does absolutely nothing to help you carry, bear or raise that child.
Here are the facts on the ground in one of those states: Oklahoma. That state’s governor recently signed into law — happily, positively beaming — a bill that makes it a felony to perform abortion, earning anyone who does so a possible sentence of 10 years in prison (rapists can get a minimum of 5 years, which tells you where Oklahoma’s priorities lie).
Like almost every state that’s cutting off access to reproductive rights, Oklahoma has a high rate of maternal mortality. Black women are especially likely to die during or after giving birth.
Source: https://my.lwv.org/oklahoma/article/oklahoma-report-maternal-deaths
Oklahoma did its own study of maternal mortality, and the results were …not good.
The CDC’s revised estimates for 2018 show the U.S. had 17.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births; the CDC lists Oklahoma’s rate of maternal deaths as 30.1 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births for 2018. This new method places Oklahoma’s ranking as the fourth worst rate in the U.S.
What’s especially horrifying is the list of causes of these maternal deaths:
The majority of maternal deaths involve cardiovascular conditions such as arrhythmia and pericardial tamponade. Infections or sepsis is the second leading cause of maternal death in Oklahoma, followed by non-cardiovascular disease that includes epilepsy, cirrhosis, asthma, and pneumonia. Hemorrhage continues to be a major issue leading to death.
You may well ask “what’s pericardial tamponade?” Pretty gruesome.
Pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous. More so than abortion.
Women of middling or better socioeconomic status — some college, if not a degree; an income that lets her household have a car, take an occasional vacation, pay bills on time; a family living in a safe neighborhood — are likely to have health insurance that would cover prenatal care and childbirth, and hospital bills for any adverse outcomes. It’s different for women who work in low-wage jobs and can barely pay their bills, let alone afford health insurance. Sadly, there are plenty of women living in those circumstances in Oklahoma.
Oklahoma ranks second in the U.S. when it comes to rate of uninsured among its population. That’s second highest, not best. 14.3% of Oklahomans have no healthcare coverage, and one in 12 children has no health insurance either.
There’s a reason for those awful numbers; Oklahoma’s leaders fought Medicaid expansion, made possible by the Affordable Care Act (which you probably know was passed into law by Barack Obama, which has made many people reflexively hate the law). Medicaid is important to pregnant women and moms; it’s one of the groups Medicaid is meant for, the others being kids, the disabled, and elderly folks with low incomes. OK’s voters finally got so fed up in June 2020 — during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many faced monumental hospital bills — that they passed a referendum making expansion the law in their state. It just became effective in July 2021.
That expansion isn’t exactly generous. It expands eligibility to adults ages 19–64 whose income is 138% of the federal poverty level or lower. Those are individuals making $17,796 a year, or $36,588 for a family of four.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a pattern. Republican men want women to have babies, but refuse to fund any programs that would ensure the health of those women — or their kids — before, during, or after birth. These new anti-woman laws are not about children. They aim to control women by controlling what we do with our bodies. (Which, incidentally, the kind of men who support these laws don’t see as ours; we are “theirs,” our bodies “vessels” for the creation of their children.) There’s a reason the men (mostly) intent on making it harder and harder for women to control their own reproductive organs are almost always “Christian” men — fundamentalist, Dominionist Christians: it’s because that segment of the far right also believes in firm, unwavering adherence to traditional gender roles (think Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale).
Meantime, Oklahoma’s governor positively crowed when his “keep ’em in the kitchen and pregnant” bill passed: he claimed his state was now the “most pro-life” state in America, but like so many places that claim to be “pro-life,” they don’t actually care much for those children once they’re born. Especially if they aren’t white.
From the newspaper/news site The Oklahoman:
1 in 5 Oklahoma children — 186,000 — were living in households with an income below the poverty line. Compared to the state average of 20%, an even higher proportion of Black and Latino children live in poverty
To sum up: The bill Oklahoma’s Governor Stitt rhapsodized about makes performing an abortion a felony. Anyone convicted could face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. At the same time, the state is among the worst in caring for pregnant mothers, providing for health care during pregnancy, offering access to care via Medicaid for women and children, and making sure its kids are healthy, safe, and well-fed.
Doesn’t seem very “pro-life,” does it?
