The most anti-abortion states are the least pro-life ones
Want to know what a real pro-life state does? Here’s an example.
Washington state is on the cusp of passing the nation’s first public option health insurance program. It’s also in the process of implementing one of the most generous paid family leave laws in the country, permitting at least three months of paid leave for new parents as of next year. It has one of America’s highest minimum wages.
It has some of the strongest protections against discrimination. It also just passed the country’s first public long-term care insurance law, which provides funding to care for people who need support with living activities, such as the elderly and those with disabilities.
Oh, and it’s about to enact a law that will provide free or reduced college tuition for middle- and low-income students.
Incidentally, Washington is also one of the states where it’s easiest to get an abortion.
Meanwhile, Georgia, Alabama, and Texas, which are again making headlines for either seeking or implementing de facto abortion bans, have adopted none of these aforementioned measures. It’s tragically evident that those states, and many others like them, couldn’t care less about the living human beings who reside within their borders, no matter how much they fixate on abortion as a smokescreen.
All three have (still) refused to expand Medicaid as called for by the Affordable Care Act years ago, which means that residents in those states who are too “rich” to enroll in Medicaid under the old threshold but too poor to purchase a private insurance policy on the marketplace are simply left without an option for coverage, so they’ll most likely remain uninsured. Indeed, Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured residents in the country; Alabama and Georgia aren’t far behind in this dubious distinction. In all three states, more than 10 percent of the population has no health insurance. This is the result of all three states fighting tooth and nail for years against efforts to expand access to coverage for their own citizens.
In the wealthiest nation on earth, how is this not a huge scandal? Where is the so-called “pro-life” crowd on this one?
All three states defer to the federal standard for the minimum wage, which, of course, is a poverty wage. Guaranteed paid family leave, a standard in the rest of the developed world, is still nothing more than a pipe dream for parents in these states whose employers aren’t generous enough to offer it to them. (Most still are not.)
Alabama has one of the highest murder rates per capita in the country. It’s right up there with Louisiana, Missouri and Arkansas, three other so-called “pro-life” states.
Do lawmakers in these places seem troubled by these facts as they push for passage of forced ultrasounds, “heartbeat” bills, and trigger bans? Of course not. If you’re surprised by that, you obviously don’t understand their motives.
Washington, and a handful of states like it, is a real pro-life state. At least it tries, however imperfectly, to honor the dignity and humanity of its residents by giving them opportunity and a hand up. Meanwhile, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, and so many others are anything but. They’re too busy feigning concern and moral indignation over the rights and well-being of fetuses while maintaining an explicitly hostile and dismissive posture toward the urgent needs of their most vulnerable living residents.
The so-called “pro-life” movement, as I’ve written before, is a sham and a travesty. It gives me no joy at all to say this, because I’d love to consider myself pro-life. But I refuse to identify with the rank hypocrisy and nauseating self-righteousness emanating from a class of voters, politicians, and special interest groups who have demonstrated that they’d rather shame, blame, denigrate, punish, and ostracize instead of helping and caring for their fellow human beings.
Washington, and a handful of states like it, is a real pro-life state. At least it tries, however imperfectly, to honor the dignity and humanity of its residents by giving them opportunity and a hand up. Meanwhile, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, and so many others are anything but.
The Republican Party does not care about life. The Republican Party uses abortion as a way to get poor people to vote for them, even as these people are being actively screwed over by Republican policies. This is made painfully clear in states where they sanctimoniously denounce the evils of terminating a pregnancy while holding firm to regressive and inhumane policies that leave many expectant mothers with little other choice.
I guess “life” matters — right up until the point when you’re born, that is.
They’re backed by an equally zealous and hypocritical “pro-life” propaganda lobby, such as LifeNews.com, where you’ll see reams of sensationalistic headlines about abortion and infanticide — and the battle with the perceived other side — but nothing at all about actual solutions to the problem they purport to be so up in arms about. Seriously — go to LifeNews.com, and just as one example, search the term “health insurance” on that site. Here’s an article that surfaces in the results:
You can’t make this shit up.
When this is the sort of media presence and narrative that informs the agenda of so-called “pro-lifers,” I suppose the hypocrisy inherent in their policy proposals shouldn’t be too surprising.
But let’s be clear: These fanatical abortion bans that are popping up in red states across the country aren’t “pro-life” in the slightest. “Pro-fetus,” perhaps; “pro-lie,” definitely.
Indeed, deception about the true intent and spirit behind these laws, I’d imagine, is the only thing that could make them palatable to anyone.
