Earlier this year, Alabama opened the proverbial reproductive flood gates after governor Kay Ivey signed the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation.
Under this legislation, pregnancy begins at the moment of conception, and doctors who perform abortions for cases other than extreme risk to pregnant mothers’ lives will face 99 years in prison, even in cases of rape and incest.
One week before, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a similar bill that bans abortion after six weeks, a point at which doctors can usually detect a fetal heartbeat, before most women even realize they are pregnant.
Ohio governor Mike DeWine has signed a bill nearly identical to Georgia’s.
Missouri advanced a bill 24-10 to criminalize abortions at 8 weeks.
More than a dozen states this year have sought to outlaw abortion.
Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, and Tennessee, have advanced anti-choice bills past one chamber of its legislature.
Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Texas, and West Virginia, your state have also introduced anti-choice legislation.
All told, 61 anti-choice bills have been introduced across the country.
This is not just about individual states’ rights.
It’s about overturning the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe versus Wade that legalized abortion.
This week, Planned Parenthood announced the White House compelled it to decline Title X funding intended to provide healthcare to over a million low-income women lest it be subjected to the administration’s “domestic gag rule,” wherein healthcare providers receiving funds for counseling patients about reproductive options that may include abortion will lose that funding if the word “abortion” is even used.
Planned Parenthood Action tweeted:
For the first time in nearly 50 years, Planned Parenthood is being forced out of the Title X program, meaning people across the country who are already struggling to make ends meet might not be able to access the care they need.
Absolutely devastating. #IStandWithPP #ProtectX https://t.co/UHjIKvhKq5
— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) August 19, 2019
According to the Planned Parenthood website, more than four million people rely on Title X funding for access to contraception, wellness exams, cervical and breast cancer screenings, contraception education, and sexually transmitted disease (STD) including HIV testing.
The organization states:
“People rely on Title X in every state at nearly 4,000 Title X-funded health centers across the country. Planned Parenthood plays a crucial role in providing this care: While Planned Parenthood health centers make up just 13 percent of Title X centers, they serve 41 percent of all Title X patients.
“That means that in many cases, preventing patients from getting care at Planned Parenthood will mean people go without care.”
Title X has been vital in preventing one million unintended pregnancies each year.
Each year, publicly funded birth control services, including Title X, prevent 1.9 million unintended pregnancies, including 440,000 teen pregnancies.
Title X has allowed women and their families more autonomy over their bodies, family planning, professions, education, and economic concerns.
For those who scream about not wanting their tax dollars funding abortion, they should know that since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has prohibited Medicaid funding for abortion services. In other words, it is illegal for Medicaid money to be put toward abortion even if a woman’s health is at risk and her doctor recommends abortion.
And Title X saves taxpayers money.
According to Planned Parenthood:
“For every dollar invested in publicly funded family planning programs like Title X, the government saves $7.09 in Medicaid-related costs. In 2010, state and federal governments saved $13.6 billion from publicly funded family planning programs, including $7 billion from Title X-funded health centers alone.”
The consequences of withdrawing from Title X for 1.5 million patients are longer wait times and increased costs for care, mostly impacting low-income patients.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood Acting President, Alexis McGill Johnson, said:
“Congress must act now. It’s time for the U.S. Senate to act to pass a spending bill that will reverse the harmful rule and restore access to birth control, STD testing, and other critical services to people with low-incomes. People’s lives depend on it.”
Back in May, when Alabama took a flamethrower to reproductive rights,
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted:
“Women’s rights are under attack. This relentless and cruel Republican assault on women’s health is designed to force a court battle to destroy Roe v. Wade. Democrats will be ready to defend health care and women’s reproductive freedom.”
And it’s exactly what the religious right expected to get when it threw its wholehearted support behind the mendacious thrice-married philanderer Donald J. Trump for president and his “Christian” running mate, Michael Pence.
It was Pence, who, as Indiana governor ordered Purvi Patel imprisoned for 20 years for having a miscarriage, alleging she had taken an abortifacient, despite tests confirming Patel did not have any drugs in her system.
Just before being elected vice president, Pence signed legislation requiring miscarried and aborted fetuses “interred or cremated,” regardless of pregnancy duration.
This was the impetus behind the “Periods for Pence,” movement, in which women tweeted or called Pence’s office to inform him when their periods started and ended so the state wouldn’t mistake their usual menstruation periods for miscarriages.
Years before–also on Pence’s watch–Bei Bei Shuai spent 435 days of a 45-year sentence in the Marion County, Indiana maximum security prison for attempting suicide, causing her 33-week fetus to die.
Then there is 28-year-old Melissa Ann Rowland of Utah, charged with murder after refusing to deliver her twins via Caesarean section.
One of those twins died.
Mississippi charged sixteen-year-old Rennie Gibbs with “depraved heart murder” after her baby was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck, causing its death.
According to state prosecutors, Gibbs had traces of cocaine in her bloodstream.
Angela Carder was also ordered to have a C-section before she succumbed to cancer.
Both she and the baby died during the procedure.
According to the Duke University Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, there were 413 documented cases of women prosecuted for miscarrying or attempting abortions between the when Roe v. Wade became the law in 1973 and 2005.
Is this version of Christian “Sharia Law” what we can expect in America’s future?
After all, we were warned.
Three years ago, Donald Trump admitted “There has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions.
Trump’s affection for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is well documented.
So maybe he and the GOP are interested in following the Middle-Eastern kingdom’s Orwellian practice of unleashing their police on “badly behaved women.”
Exactly what Jesus would have done, right?
Although reproductive rights have always been a political football since Roe v. Wade‘s signing, and there have been prognosticators that have predicted its demise before, we are hard-pressed to think of time in recent memory when the religious right has been so emboldened and women’s rights so threatened.
What country do we want America to be?
We know what conservatives want.
They want to “end” abortions (except for mostly white women of means).
Is this who we are?
You know the answer.
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