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Pro Life = Anti Child
Jan. 25th, 2005 12:42 pmThe web is bubbling over with pro and anti choice news, since the anniversary of Roe v Wade was on Saturday. Much of it is centering on Mississippi, the state with the most legal restrictions on abortion. This particular article from The Nation, found by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twistedchick should be a must-read for both sides, because it lays out in neutral, non-ranting, clear language how restricting abortion and birth control works against the stated pro-life goal of saving women and children.
The uncomfortable irony for an opposition movement purportedly concerned with saving "innocent babies" is that restrictions on abortion are associated with worse outcomes for actual babies. Indeed, children fare terribly in Mississippi. The state with arguably the least access to abortion also has the second-highest rate of child poverty in the country, according to the Children's Defense Fund. Mississippi's infant mortality rate--a good indication of the health of both women and children--is the highest in the country. For every 1,000 live births, 10.5 infants under age 1 die in Mississippi. In parts of the impoverished Delta region, that number ranges up to 18. (The national infant mortality rate, by comparison, is 6.8.) Interestingly, a postelection comparison found that "red" states had higher infant mortality rates than "blue" ones. In general, states that restrict abortion spend far less money per child than prochoice states on services such as foster care, education, welfare and the adoption of children who have physical and mental disabilities, according to a 2000 book by political scientist Jean Reith Schroedel.
Schroedel also found that women in antiabortion states are worse off than their counterparts in prochoice states. They suffer from lower levels of education, higher levels of poverty, and a larger gender gap in earnings. They are also less likely to enjoy mandated insurance coverage for minimum hospital stays after childbirth. Together, the conditions make for an abysmal reality for women in Mississippi, which came in fifty-first in a 2004 ranking of the status of women in the fifty states and Washington, DC.
Among other things the article talks about is that even though the law demands exceptions for rape, incest, and health, in practice those are not available. No doctors to do the abortion outside the single state clinic, no Medicare money even though it is promised. Furthermore, by rolling back the acceptable abortion deadline to 16 weeks - before amniocentisis and other fetal testing - it is no longer possible for a Mississippi mother to abort a damaged, dying fetus.
If you don't read the whole article, think about this parting paragraph:
Mississippi, the proclamation tells you, lives by a different law from the rest of the land--for now, anyway. And even while they challenge it simply by running Mississippi's last remaining abortion facility, Susan Hill and Betty Thompson have been forced to accept that reality. In his lawn chair outside the clinic, Roy McMillan rejoices in it. And the women of Mississippi, who sleep in their cars, shuttle out of state and bear unwanted children in poverty, live it.
Another link that's making the rounds is the Brutal Women article "Today Was the First Day I Considered a United States Without the Right to Legal Abortion." I think the comparison of loss of reproductive control to living in uneducated purdah is a bit much - I hope it's a bit much! - there was one really great passage:
Until you have grown up knowing that old men like these have the ultimate control over your body and what you do with it, over your labor, over how you choose to spend your body's breath and blood, you won't know this terror, this uncertaintly, this screaming, terrified anger at the co-option of all that you are for use by the state.
The closest male equivalent I can think of is the draft: being forced to fight a war you did not vote for, for a cause you did not want, at a time in your life when all the world's possibilities are spread before you. And there is no honor in it. There is no medal. Because you will be told that your purpose in life is just this: to live or die for the state. That is your biological burden, and if you survive this war, you will be forced to take home with you a burden far greater than merely serving the state: you'll be given a child that is yours, whose future, whose mental and physical health, whose deeds, will be forever your responsibility.
And there is no conscientious objector clause. There's no medical leave. There's no reprieve if you're mentally ill.
I think that's a great analogy.
ETA: I notice that the reporting of the anti-Roe march was accompanied with a tight shot leading to the suggestion that the mall was full of bodies. According to the march organizers, they got 100,000 people at the march. (No numbers given for counter-protesters.) Absolutely nobody has compared this with the pro-choice march, which blanketed the entire mall and at even the most conservative estimates was 3 quarters of a million people (the official organizer count was a million plus).
twistedchick should be a must-read for both sides, because it lays out in neutral, non-ranting, clear language how restricting abortion and birth control works against the stated pro-life goal of saving women and children.The uncomfortable irony for an opposition movement purportedly concerned with saving "innocent babies" is that restrictions on abortion are associated with worse outcomes for actual babies. Indeed, children fare terribly in Mississippi. The state with arguably the least access to abortion also has the second-highest rate of child poverty in the country, according to the Children's Defense Fund. Mississippi's infant mortality rate--a good indication of the health of both women and children--is the highest in the country. For every 1,000 live births, 10.5 infants under age 1 die in Mississippi. In parts of the impoverished Delta region, that number ranges up to 18. (The national infant mortality rate, by comparison, is 6.8.) Interestingly, a postelection comparison found that "red" states had higher infant mortality rates than "blue" ones. In general, states that restrict abortion spend far less money per child than prochoice states on services such as foster care, education, welfare and the adoption of children who have physical and mental disabilities, according to a 2000 book by political scientist Jean Reith Schroedel.
Schroedel also found that women in antiabortion states are worse off than their counterparts in prochoice states. They suffer from lower levels of education, higher levels of poverty, and a larger gender gap in earnings. They are also less likely to enjoy mandated insurance coverage for minimum hospital stays after childbirth. Together, the conditions make for an abysmal reality for women in Mississippi, which came in fifty-first in a 2004 ranking of the status of women in the fifty states and Washington, DC.
Among other things the article talks about is that even though the law demands exceptions for rape, incest, and health, in practice those are not available. No doctors to do the abortion outside the single state clinic, no Medicare money even though it is promised. Furthermore, by rolling back the acceptable abortion deadline to 16 weeks - before amniocentisis and other fetal testing - it is no longer possible for a Mississippi mother to abort a damaged, dying fetus.
If you don't read the whole article, think about this parting paragraph:
Mississippi, the proclamation tells you, lives by a different law from the rest of the land--for now, anyway. And even while they challenge it simply by running Mississippi's last remaining abortion facility, Susan Hill and Betty Thompson have been forced to accept that reality. In his lawn chair outside the clinic, Roy McMillan rejoices in it. And the women of Mississippi, who sleep in their cars, shuttle out of state and bear unwanted children in poverty, live it.
Another link that's making the rounds is the Brutal Women article "Today Was the First Day I Considered a United States Without the Right to Legal Abortion." I think the comparison of loss of reproductive control to living in uneducated purdah is a bit much - I hope it's a bit much! - there was one really great passage:
Until you have grown up knowing that old men like these have the ultimate control over your body and what you do with it, over your labor, over how you choose to spend your body's breath and blood, you won't know this terror, this uncertaintly, this screaming, terrified anger at the co-option of all that you are for use by the state.
The closest male equivalent I can think of is the draft: being forced to fight a war you did not vote for, for a cause you did not want, at a time in your life when all the world's possibilities are spread before you. And there is no honor in it. There is no medal. Because you will be told that your purpose in life is just this: to live or die for the state. That is your biological burden, and if you survive this war, you will be forced to take home with you a burden far greater than merely serving the state: you'll be given a child that is yours, whose future, whose mental and physical health, whose deeds, will be forever your responsibility.
And there is no conscientious objector clause. There's no medical leave. There's no reprieve if you're mentally ill.
I think that's a great analogy.
ETA: I notice that the reporting of the anti-Roe march was accompanied with a tight shot leading to the suggestion that the mall was full of bodies. According to the march organizers, they got 100,000 people at the march. (No numbers given for counter-protesters.) Absolutely nobody has compared this with the pro-choice march, which blanketed the entire mall and at even the most conservative estimates was 3 quarters of a million people (the official organizer count was a million plus).
