Newborn babies are the latest victims in the ongoing Republican War On Women™. The most recent deadly aspect of the crisis started with Donald Trump proudly putting three anti-abortion Catholics on the Supreme Court, promising America that they’d overturn Roe v Wade. He sure delivered on that; it was probably the only promise he’s kept in his entire life.
Multiple pregnant Red state women have, over the past year or so, told harrowing stories about almost dying before doctors were willing to give them healthcare for fear of going to prison because of draconian state abortion bans.
But now we learn that GOP policies aren’t just capable of killing women; they appear to have killed at least 20,000 newborn babies in 2022, as Red states across the country instituted abortion bans in the wake of the Dobbs decision by six Republicans on the Supreme Court.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics reported that after a steady, 25-year decline in infant mortality, America saw a full 3 percent increase in dead newborn babies during the first Dobbs year. (Statistics for 2023 will come out next year.)
White women were hit the hardest, suggesting this isn’t another example of health outcome disparities resulting from structural and institutional racism but, instead, a direct result of Republican abortion bans altering the way physicians and hospitals are practicing medicine.
Abortion bans are just one aspect of how Republican’s view of women’s role in society play out. Another is the widespread belief across the evangelical community that Paul was right when he said in I Corinthians 14:34-35:
“Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”
We see this attitude in the GOP backlash against women in business and politics, particularly targeting “ambitious” women:
— In the 2016 primary, Donald Trump ridiculed Carly Fiorina, the HP CEO who ran a Fortune 20 company and oversaw the largest tech merger in history, ignoring her accomplishments and instead criticizing her looks, calling her “Horseface.”
— This week, JD Vance claimed that all Kamala Harris has done in her life is to “collect a government check,” implying she’s one of Reagan’s notorious Black “welfare queens” and erasing her extraordinary career as a district attorney, attorney general, and Vice President of the United States.
— Trump last week called Harris “dumb as a rock,” a favorite male insult against women and Trump’s favorite descriptor for Black women. Multiple congressional and media Republicans, including, most recently, Marjorie Taylor Greene, have called her a “DEI hire,” suggesting (because women are the principle beneficiaries of DEI programs) that she’s a “token woman.” (In Greene’s case, it’s safe to assume she was also referring to Harris’ racial background.)
— The Republican National Committee posted a sexist attack of her laugh to X, saying, “Kamala Harris brought her cackle to Milwaukee: ‘Good afternoon, Wisconsin! Ha ha ha ha!’” How dare this powerful woman enjoy a good laugh!
— Monday, Lance Wallnau, a leading prophet in the New Apostolic Reformation and Trump supporter, claimed that Harris was, essentially, a whore, citing the infamous biblical Jezebel, saying Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel, and in a way that’ll be even much more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.”
— Fox “News’” Tomi Lahren tweeted, “Kamala did you fight for ideals or did you sleep your way to the top with Willie Brown?” (It’s a favorite Republican slur against successful women: How dare she date a powerful man and also hold a powerful position!)
Controlling women’s reproductive capacity is, to today’s Republican way of thinking, the key to keeping them out of the workplace and away from political power (there are more than twice as many Democratic women in the House and Senate as Republicans, for example).
It’s no coincidence that the women’s movement for equality in the workplace took off after the birth control pill was approved by the FDA in 1961 and abortion was legalized in 1973.
Similarly, it’s no coincidence that Republicans across the nation are now attacking abortion rights and in multiple states have set off on a crusade to end access to birth control.
It’s also why women, even when they do succeed in the workplace, generally earn less than men and find it harder to advance through the corporate ranks.
Women are under Republican attacks from every direction, leaving many dangerously vulnerable.
The Washington Post reported this week that entire hospitals are having to abandon their labor and delivery units because physicians are fleeing GOP-imposed abortion bans that put them at risk if a pregnant woman needs an emergency abortion:
“Not so long ago, Bonner General Health, the hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho, had four OB/GYNs on staff, who treated patients from multiple rural counties.
“That was before Idaho’s near-total abortion ban went into effect almost two years ago, criminalizing most abortions. All four of Bonner’s OB/GYNs left by last summer, some citing fears that the state’s ban exposed them to legal peril for doing their jobs.”
JD Vance and Ted Cruz demanding that police be allowed to force doctors to turn over menstrual and other health records to police is just the latest outrage; more come almost daily.
And Trump tripled down on the GOP’s newest Big Lie strategy for attacking female politicians, saying of Harris:
“She is so radical, she wants abortions in the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy. That’s fine with her. Right up until birth, and even after birth. The execution of a baby, because that’s not abortion, that’s the execution of a baby.”
Nikki Haley made the mistake of thinking she’d get a fair shake from the GOP. It’ll never happen, so long as the MAGA/Evangelical/bigot contingents run the party.
As they repeatedly tell us, both in words and actions, they’ll never stop until all American women are barefoot, pregnant, and silent.
