![]() ![]() At the end of its session, the Legislature extended postpartum care to one year. Until just days ago, Texas also long resisted providing Medicaid to women for more than two months after a pregnancy, despite increasing maternal mortality rates and the pleas of medical experts. The story is much the same in more populous Texas, the long Republican-controlled state that pioneered a dystopian bounty law to snare anyone who aided or abetted an abortion - before it and other states got the Supreme Court’s green light to ban them. The state’s mortality rate for women in the year following the end of a pregnancy is nearly double the national average, and deaths have long been disproportionately high among Black women. Healthcare, business and grassroots groups had long pressed for the extended care, and with good reason. The big-talking governor did relent on one policy that he and the Legislature have previously opposed: He recently signed a bill giving women who qualify for the state’s limited Medicaid coverage a full year of postpartum care, up from just two months. Republicans want to ban abortion but have not proposed measures to help pregnant women and their children once they are born. Opinion Column: Republican ‘pro-life’ advocacy ends with a child’s birth And yet, the publication reported, “There was no serious push by Republicans in the 2023 session to even debate expansion, let alone vote on it.” But the state - first in the nation in both overall poverty and child poverty, and second from the last in healthcare - still refuses to take the single step that would help the most low-income families: It is one of just 10 states, all of them with Republican-controlled legislatures, Republican governors or both, that hasn’t expanded Medicaid for certain uninsured low-income adults and children, even though the feds mostly pick up the tab under the 2010 Affordable Care Act.Įconomists say the state is forfeiting about $1.5 billion annually to provide roughly 300,000 residents with healthcare, according to Mississippi Today. 2 - Congress has done all it can on gunsĪmerica’s assault weapons ban, in effect from 1994 to 2004, shows that such a law enacted now would mean many fewer Nashvilles in the future.Īfter the Dobbs decision, Mississippi quickly banned abortion except in cases where a woman’s life is in danger or when a pregnancy results from a rape, if the rape has been reported to police. When it comes to abortion bans and post-Dobbs policies, the gap between bold talk about compassion for disadvantaged women and children and action on their behalf is particularly stark. Besides, as John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, says, “This is not an either/or situation - states can invest in mental health services while also passing laws to prevent people with dangerous histories from buying guns.” Yet gun safety groups see little follow-through on the former. After each mass shooting, Republicans say attention to mental health, not firearm restrictions, is the answer. Alas, few things were more predictable than the fact that they wouldn’t.Ī similar political dynamic is at work with gun policies. Most state legislatures have held their 2023 sessions those with antiabortion majorities have had the time and opportunity to make good on their promises to strengthen their states’ safety nets. Reeves proclaimed on national television networks, “We must show that being pro-life is not just about being antiabortion” and “do everything we can to make it easier on those moms who may be in unwanted pregnancies” and to ensure “that those babies, once born, have a productive life.” Jackson Women’s Health Organization, to the Supreme Court, and that is a perennial bottom-dweller in rankings of the states’ safety nets. Tate Reeves of Mississippi, the state that brought the winning antiabortion case, Dobbs vs. Among the most prominent promisers was Gov. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |