Abortion bans don’t just kill women. They kill babies. This is evident in the data, which shows a dramatic rise in the state’s infant mortality after Texas banned abortion. As the Washington Post documented last week, it’s also happening in a viscerally disturbing way, as the number of newborns found abandoned to die has spiked, as well. Babies, mostly dead, are being found in ditches and dumpsters throughout Texas, traumatizing the people who find them and the emergency workers who are called to help.
Only the biggest liars in the anti-choice movement — and to be fair, there’s stiff competition for that award — would deny that the state’s abortion ban is the main cause of the sharp increase in dead, abandoned babies. The Washington Post also notes that Republicans have repeatedly cut funding for prenatal care and family planning services. In addition, draconian approaches to illegal immigration have led to undocumented women avoiding medical care, for fear of being deported. The result is what one Texas law enforcement official called “a little bit of an epidemic” of infant abandonment.
Texas Republicans show no interest in educating people about safe haven laws, however.
One would think that the “pro-life” movement would be alarmed by all the dead babies, moving heaven and earth to make sure pregnant girls and women in desperate circumstances have safe alternatives to giving birth in secret and throwing the baby away. But that would only be true if anti-abortion activists were, in fact, “pro-life.” Instead, the reaction of anti-choice leaders and Republican legislators so far has been a collective shrug, if they bother to acknowledge the problem at all.
There’s one telling detail in the Post report that underscores how much Republicans don’t care the slightest if babies die because of their abortion ban. As Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports, “Republican leaders who control state government have long declined to fund an awareness campaign so that new mothers know where to turn should they decide that they cannot keep their baby.”
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Texas has a so-called safe haven law that allows women to relinquish babies to the authorities, no questions asked. For years, it was trendy for Republicans to pass these laws to create the illusion of concern for infant life, and to bolster their false claims to be “pro-life.” But it was never a sincere effort to allow women in dire circumstances a chance to save a baby’s life without getting into legal trouble. The programs are underfunded, barely advertised and subsequently barely used. “Despite the legislative promise that the safe haven laws will increase child safety and legal compliance, the efficacy is suspect as the laws do not appear to protect mothers or their babies,” Alexandra Schrader-Dobris explained last year in the Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality.
Texas Republicans show no interest in educating people about safe haven laws, however. Instead, as Hennessy-Fiske reports, they allocated $165 million to “alternatives to abortion,” mostly so-called crisis pregnancy centers. The goal of a crisis pregnancy center is not to help women in crisis. It’s to do whatever it takes to keep her pregnant until it’s too late to get an abortion, including through lies, threats, bullying, shaming, and false promises of help. The goal is not “life,” but punishing the young woman for perceived sexual transgression, either because she had consensual sex or because she “tempted” a man into raping her.
Because the goal is punishment, there’s no reason for Republicans to invest in safe haven laws, which shield young women from legal consequences for abandoning a newborn. When a young woman throws a baby in a dumpster, however, that’s a crime and she can be arrested. More resources into the safe haven program would save lives, but would reduce the number of women that can be thrown in jail. Given a choice between living babies or imprisoned women, Republicans pick the latter. Even the Republican who wrote the state’s safe haven law, Rep. Geanie Morrison, explained that she has no interest in making it easier for women to use it. “The problem is, if you do state funding, then you’re tied to it,” she explained, not even bothering to come up with a more plausible-sounding non sequitur.
The reaction to the Washington Post article from anti-abortion activists has been muted. The holidays are a busy time, yet many of them continued to post about what they do think matters. “Fornication and masturbation are self-abuse,” wrote Lila Rose, an anti-choice leader and outspoken proponent of the Texas abortion ban, on the day the Post report came out. Two days later, she circled around to the topic again, declaring, “‘Sexual compatibility’ is a myth,” and that only shallow people insist on it before making a lifelong commitment to another person.
From top to bottom, the Christian right’s view of womanhood is a grim one. Even if a woman follows all their rules about waiting for marriage and eschewing birth control, her “reward” is being lectured about how it’s immature to want sexual satisfaction within marriage. The vast majority of women take one look at this prescription of a life of thankless service to men and patriarchy and take a pass. That’s why the GOP is so focused on abortion bans and other restrictions on sexual health care. If they can’t get women to volunteer for lives of meaningless drudgery, at least they can punish them for trying to have something more fulfilling.
The unwillingness to prevent infant abandonment is in line with the recent Texas decision to suppress investigations into maternal mortality after the abortion ban went into effect. Such investigations could result in a better understanding by doctors of how to treat pregnant women in a medical emergency, rather than letting them die. But in the GOP-controlled state, they’re fine with a passive form of the death penalty for being a sexually active woman. It’s unlikely there will be much investigation into the rising number of infant deaths, either. The torture of bringing a baby to term, only to watch it die, is also within the Republican realm of acceptable punishments for women.
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