A new report reveals the reality of the United States post-Dobbs: abortion deserts, especially concentrated in the southeast, forcing women to flee to nearby states that provide care.
To me the most troubling part of this article is not that women had to travel out of state to get abortions but the women who are unable to travel out of state and had to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.
I also wish TPM had discussed the fact that the same states that are taking away reproductive rights are also the worst states for child care, health care as many have refused ACA expansion, education, and basic services for children and especially poor single mothers.
One wonders if Samuel Alito, et al, lacking in any medical knowledge or training, ever ponders their actions in the light of “unintended consequences.” I kid, I kid.
There is no war on women.
Yes, generally, abortion access becomes a class issue, a fact that I doubt was far from the minds of the generally well-to-do legislators who supported tightening restrictions on the care.
There is a corollary to this: Texas reports 17 abortions during January- April of 2023.
In 2020, there were more than 6.1 M females of reproductive age (17- 44) in Texas.
The idea that during that period only 17 women of reproductive age in Texas experienced a pregnancy that resulted in medical crisis that required an abortion doesn’t even begin to pass the giggle test. So, what’s happening:
Abortions are happening, but the women are traveling out of state for them. Now, running up from El Paso to Las Cruces is 30 or 40 miles on I-10. No big deal. But going from Midland-Odessa to Las Cruces is a significant trip, and I doubt that Clovis or Carlsbad are viable alternatives to Las Cruces or Albuquerque for that sort of care.
Abortions are happening on the down-low in Texas. Some Ob/Gyns are practicing medicine rather than politics and risking running afoul of the law and ignoring good clinical practice by not documenting everything they do.
Pregnant women are self-managing abortion care.
Women are just dying from pregnancy complications.
I suppose there are other possibilities, but none of these are good public health practice. We are also unlikely to know which of the above are operative, other than the certainty that the first is working. That’s already documented in the abortion numbers for states near-ish Texas where abortion remains legal, like New Mexico and Kansas.
ETA: Alternative #2 was fairly widely practiced in many places pre-Roe. I don’t know that it’s being practiced in Texas now, but I’d not be surprised to learn that it is.
How is this not theocratic rule?
The Dobbs majority on SCotUS is glad to know you recognize this fact.
It is. What’s it to ya?
I’m so relieved, because it really felt like it. But now that I see the mainstream media doesn’t cover how different health care is for females than males, I see I had all that anxiety for nothing. And I’m glad I live in such a strong, freedom-loving land that some random stranger can follow and harrass me if I’m driving a woman to a Planned Parenthood in another state.
I seem to remember there was some talk in the last year of states not tracking/under reporting maternal deaths. It will be interesting to see where 2023 numbers are in comparison to say 2013.
Snark-o-meter pegged on that.
For those of us old enough to remember America before Roe, this is indeed the most troubling and predictable issue.
That is before Roe you often heard the term “backroom butcher” and that every hospital had an abortion ward for medical complications caused by women receiving unsafe medical procedures or just doing it themselves.
That is what the Dobbs decision did for women was turn the clock back over 50 years.
The fight to me is between religion and the constitution as amended for the 20th and now 21st century.
Under the constitution as amended, women and men are equal. However, under religion, like it or not women are not and will never be equal to men.
Or to put another way, two things must happen for women to be equal to men.
The first is they must be able to walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut and still think they are beautiful.
The second and more important is for the monotheists, (Christians, Muslims and Jews) they must change the pronoun for God.
That is like it or not, where the pronoun for the one and all powerful God is “HE” and God created Man in “HIS” image. Woman are by definition inferior.
So the conflict is between constitutional or legal equality and religion which as practiced by just about everyone including most non monotheists, whereby women are inferior.
If only half the voters understood how actual science works, it’s egalitarian, sharing & collaboration to sift through & amass how the world/universe is constructed & works, we humans would stand a chance to save ourselves by respecting the planet. Alas.
I do not believe in virgin births. By that I mean things generally work as intended.
Or to put another way, I actually think this was very much on the minds of “generally well to do legislators who supported tightening restrictions on care”.
That is the abortion restrictions I am seeing are mostly slanted to deny care to poor women. The very rhetoric that this should be a “states issue” which by definition allows for women with some means to go out of state obviously makes it first and foremost a class issue.
When Sandra Day O’Conner wrote the Casey decision that changed the trimester formula in Roe to “No undue burden” and then applied that standard to herself, a rich White women, everyone understood O’Conner made abortion very much a class issue.
Furthermore, as there is a link between “class” and “race” and therefore whenever you talk about “class” you are talking about “race”, while everyone knew exactly what was happening.
The gamble many Republicans made, who have been buying power on a credit card of abortion, is that they can make abortion “illegal for thee but not for me”.
The problem Republicans face is how do they keep the true believers that abortion should be illegal for everyone when on economic issues those true believers are much better served by voting for Democrats while at the same time not losing their own constituents who want access to the health care of their choosing.
The obvious answer is to make it a class thereby also a race issue. Will this work to keep the true believers? It could because at least health care the true believers do not believe in is deprived to some people whereas the other side would provide equal access to all health care.
That is it is possible that Republicans will be able to thread the needle by allowing all its voters to still get abortion on demand while denying it “those people” thereby at least reducing abortions from the alternative offered by Democrats.
Wonder if he thinks he can do anything about this.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/06/mexico-supreme-court-decriminalizes-abortion-nationwide-00114327
And one has to wonder just what the wackos on the right (and in Congress) will react to THIS!
Oh, you know! “You have tampered in God’s domain…blah…blah…blah”. Cue the villagers with pitchforks.
Oh, believe it.
Among vertebrates, it happens in a few fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds.
Not in mammals.
Invertebrate reproductive systems are all over the map and it can happen pretty frequently among them. Aphids are notorious for it…