I’ve been listening to and reading some of the statements made by Republicans to justify their votes against the recent bill to codify Roe v. Wade to protect a woman’s right to abortion. Most of these statements by the pro-life crowd and the Republicans who pander to them, argue that they need to stand up to protect the ’rights of the unborn child’.
Our own Montana Republican senator, Steve Daines, when speaking on the senate floor stated that the proposed bill would leave a fetus with fewer legal protections than certain animal eggs. He went on to say:
“If you were to take or destroy the eggs of a sea turtle, the criminal penalties are severe,” he said. “Why do we have laws in place that protect the eggs of a sea turtle or the eggs of eagles? Because when you destroy an egg, you’re killing a preborn baby sea turtle or a preborn baby eagle.”
OK, I get it. All of the Republicans want to overturn Roe v. Wade in order to protect the unborn fetus. So, here’s the question. If all of these pro-life Republicans are so damned concerned about the welfare of an unborn fetus, why the hell don’t they care more about the mothers and children once they are born?
The United States is the only – repeat ONLY – country out of 41 industrialized nations surveyed that has no mandated paid parental leave policy. Two thirds of these countries mandate 20 weeks or more of paid parental leave and the least amount in any of the 40 other countries is about two months.1 The United States mandates ZERO! The Republicans killed Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ plan when Joe Manchin, the pretend Democrat from West Virginia, objected to the 12 weeks of paid parental leave and voted against the bill even when that was dropped to 4 weeks.
Not only is there no mandated parental leave in this country, everyone seems to be very aware there is also a child care crisis. For many families, or single mothers, child care is a crippling expense, even if its available. Once again, the United States is far behind the rest of the world, according to Barbara Risman, who has studied this for 40 years and is now a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago.2 Her belief based upon her studies is that the US suffers from a lingering myth that a woman’s place is in the home and men should be the breadwinner. Whether or not you believe this, the fact remains, child care in the US is expensive and often not available. However, I think there is something to her argument.
Anu Partanen is a dual Finnish and US citizen who lived in the US but has since relocated back to Finland with her husband and young daughter. She said that in Finland, women do not have to make a choice between working and childcare which is why a high percentage of Finnish women are employed. “In the Nordic countries, there is more of the thinking that a child has rights independent of their parents, and it’s the society’s and the laws’ duty to give children those opportunities and those rights, regardless of their parents,” Partanen explained.2 In this country, so often the success of a child and the access to opportunities is directly tied to the luck of who the child was born to.
A recent study on healthcare in the United States compared healthcare in this country to that provided in 11 other high-income countries3. The United States came in dead last. According to the study: “The top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranks last overall, despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care. The U.S. ranks last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes, but second on measures of care process.”
Of specific relevance to this whole overturning Roe v. Wade controversy is the issue of the maternity mortality rate in the US. In another recent study when the maternity mortality rate in the US was compared to that in 11 other developed countries, the US ranked dead last.4 The US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world. And we are now going to force more women to have more babies so even without back-alley abortions the Republicans are condemning more women to die. ‘Right to life’ my ass.
Firearms have taken over from automobile crashes as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents (defined as 1 to 19).5 Every time anyone tries to enact any type of gun control legislation, the Republicans block it. Gun violence in this country is worse than any other country in the world and yet there is zero effort by the Republicans to do anything to protect children from gun violence.
If the mothers and children survive long enough given all of the above, the next question is, “Who will educate them?” It is a well-known fact that schools in this country are already overcrowded, class sizes are too large and there is a growing shortage of qualified teachers. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, there will be a flood of additional kids to educate. And where will the money come from to beef up the education system to handle this influx? Given that the Republicans are loath to raises taxes, particularly on the wealthy, the burden will more than likely fall upon all of the middle-income tax payers and home owners, a significant majority of whom are against overturning Roe v. Wade. Once again, the law of unintended consequences will emerge victorious.
In summary, it seems that the Republicans and the pro-lifers are willing to sacrifice democracy for unborn fetuses but are unwilling to provide the resources to the mothers who give birth to these children to properly care for them. And they are unwilling to fight to protect the lives of living, breathing children by providing basic healthcare, education, insurance and taking steps to stem the gun violence that has become a second epidemic in this country.
The Republican platform seems to be to force women to have children that they don’t want or shouldn’t have, for whatever reason, and then basically tell them, “You’re on your own now!” Franz Kafka could not have written anything more absurd.
- https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/16/u-s-lacks-mandated-paid-parental-leave/
- https://crosscut.com/news/2022/01/why-child-care-us-lags-behind-much-world
- Healthcare in the U.S. Compared to Other Countries in 2021 – APRA (americanpatient.org)
- US Ranks Worst in Maternal Care, Mortality Compared With 10 Other Developed Nations (ajmc.com)
- https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761