A post Roe world would bring massive hardship to low- or middle-income women and, let’s be honest, to the children that they will be forced to birth when options for an abortion are both financially or logistically out of reach.
The pro-life movement has worked tirelessly to get to this moment. A lot less effort has been put into supporting women and children both through pregnancy and once those children leave the womb. Beyond the state-sponsored cruelty of forcing a woman to give birth to her rapist’s child or the government overreach of laws that tell a mother of four that she must embrace a new life as she is barely keeping her family housed and fed, we are not a country with family friendly policies.
Our health care system has gaping holes that mean many women will not receive the health care they should during and after their pregnancies. Our maternal mortality rate is an embarrassment. We do not recognize with paid maternity leave that the early months of a child’s life require 24/7 care, making it impossible for women to care for a newborn while continuing to work. Yet they still need to eat and keep a roof over their heads.
We have 11 million children who go to bed hungry more than once a week, but our Congress didn’t continue the family child tax credit that reduced those numbers by more than half. Our child care system is overly expensive. We have an affordable housing crisis forcing more than 100,000 children into homelessness. Our schools are overcrowded and underfunded. We can’t pass gun laws to protect children. Perhaps the pro-life movement is misnamed. It seems to be narrowly pro-birth. And given the state of health care in this country, it is not even pro-healthy birth.
Lynn MacLean
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Duluth
The Trust Project
