Infant mortality rises in US states with abortion bans

it seems like a total non-sequitur.

Two conditions, and what you would expect to see:

One, that banning abortion is because your focus as lawmakers is on babies, welfare of babies, health of babies. Kindness to mothers and a deep care for the outcomes of children.

Two, that your focus is on restricting and hurting women. You don't care about women, or children. No care or thought to reducing infant or maternal mortality.

In condition one, what you should see, as well as abortion bans, are measures to increase the welfare of mothers and babies. Any increase in infant mortality from full-term abortions that would have happened, should be balanced with reduced overall infant mortality because of the other things you've done for infants, children, and families. You should, if you have lawmakers focused on infant health and wellness, already live in one of the states that has a good track record.

In condition two, you'd expect poor outcomes before and after the ban. You'd expect bad outcomes for infants, e.g. high infant mortality. Because there would be no other measures put in place to help mothers and babies. You'd expect poor outcomes all around. Because no one cares about mothers and babies.

And LO! Already bad infant mortality, getting worse.

Do any of these lawmakers even pretend? Suggest laws for nutrition, maternity leave, BFing support, housing, anything that would actually reduce infant mortality?

I don't quite understand your point here, it seems like a total non-sequitur.

My point is that the fact that these deaths are now being counted in a different set of statistics doesn't actually show that medical progress has been set back, or that it was better before, which seems to me to be the implication of the article. These kinds of abnormalities and problems were not cured by abortion, and they aren't cured now. It's a very disingenuous argument.

You cant possibly be silenced

There's a difference between the theory, which is about classes of people; and the practice which is how policies impact actual individual women.
A poor woman has all of her choices limited by poverty. We don't improve her lot by removing one of the few choices she has.

If we want to design a path out of this situation for women, then people need to get over their knee jerk dog in a manger reaction to other people getting free stuff that they can't have, or to 'socialist' policies; and we need to design a society in which its possible to raise children.
Women need pre natal nutrition and healthcare, maternal leave from work, childcare and housing. Children need healthcare and education. Seeing these benefits as being a drain on hard working tax payers misses the point that they are requirements for a civilised society.

Abortion bans are killing women and babies. Abortion is a healthcare issue. Squeamishness about medical abortion has no place in the debate because no legitimate Government has the right to impost the death penalty on a woman who's only crime is to be unlucky in pregnancy.

Well, it is better that a very poor Black woman can end her pregnancy early rather than have a little bub who cannot live because of conditions caused by her poverty - but that's not really choice, is it? A woman in this situation isn't exercising any kind of free choice. Her poverty has already stripped her of autonomy.

Probably due to the level of racism in the US that black women are more likely to be living in severe poverty with insufficient access to medical care. Terrible nutrition is one cause that can increase birth defects.

@ArabellaScott
(sorry I've tagged you and phone won't let me delete tag - post once written not so directly responsive to your question)

On this thread @Grammarnut has suggested it is better for a severely disabled child to die than live with an impoverished family which I guess looks like a slippery slope to me.
I want to be able to preserve women's ability to chose whether or not to bring a pregnancy to term without opening the door to devaluing some lives and expecting termination from some women in some circumstances (see also, 2 child caps).

Probably not allowed access to contraception?
There was a shocking case of two young white parents in USA who left two older children in a room daubed with faeces and urine

The Baby had cockroach faeces in her groin with a festering nappy-
The children didn’t speak and when taken outside by police looked at the grass like it was nothing they had seen before.

These children will probably never recover from early neglect.
Thank goodness a neighbour called child services as she saw the children with excrement all over them at the windows- naked day after day.

Early Abortion and decent contraception could have saved this awful suffering to the children.

It was on a news story online.

Contraception and Termination is way better than unwanted children and inhumane neglect.

But why would Black women be so much more likely to conceive infants with conditions incompatible with life?
I think these numbers might be revealing something dreadful but all the energy and analysis focuses on the political goals most attractive to wealthy/ white women.

There are feminist reasons for opposing abortion, at least abortion on demand of healthy pregnancies. One, I think, is that abortion on demand makes of a woman a sex object only rather than as a person with reproductive rights. I mean that a woman who chooses not to abort an accidental pregnancy or one that is unwanted is seen as selfish by some - as imposing duties e.g. upon the father than he has not accepted.
The problem of aborting healthy pregnancies arises though when one looks at abject poverty in which some women live, who may also be abused mentally, physically and sexually. In such cases abortion may well be the right choice of action. I find the suggestion that such unwanted babies can be adopted as awful as surrogacy; as if the poor and miserable should put up with their misery to provide better off woman with a child. There is no right to have children.

All life is valuable. Whether that life lasts one minute or one century.

Valuable to who? Who benefits from forcing a woman or girl to carry a foetus with a medical condition not compatible with life to term?

Not the woman/girl. She's had months of carrying this foetus with all the associated physical and mental risks, knowing what the outcome would be. What is the value to her?

Not the foetus/baby who dies in pain shortly after birth. What is the value to him/her?

So who benefits?

It's clear it's not about babies. The infant mortality rate has gone up in those states that have total bans because some children will be born only to die, and often die in pain and to the great distress of their mother and father.

Given that many posters have laid out eloquent and compassionate posts on their reasoning for supporting rights to abortion, it might have been good to hear the counter arguments from those claiming to want debate.

I see we've been accused of 'bitching', instead.

Well they would not have been born would they?

Are you so anti abortion you think it is a good thing to force a woman or girl to carry a baby to term knowing it will die at birth or shortly after?

I cannot get my head around that. I can get my head around some 'pro life' ideas, even if I don't agree with them but not forcing a woman / girl to carry a non viable pregnancy.

@puck23? Can you explain your laugh reaction to my post please?

Women who miscarry at that gestation have photographs taken by hospital staff, sealed and kept on the notes in case they ask for them later, sometimes many years later.

I'm also not going to be graphic, but these are not all just tiny versions of healthy full term births and they have experienced every moment (due to the miscarriages being spontaneous) rather than having absolutely no awareness or sensation as there would be in a planned termination for medical reasons/incompatibility with life.

Deliberately punishing both the mothers and their dying child by ensuring that they both have the maximum period of suffering before one has the release of death and the other has a life sentence of the memory of watching it happen - if they survive themselves - and to also be financially crucified as an intentional part of the punishment - is cruelty for the sake of it.

A baby can survive at 24 weeks.

Er, no

Some babies can survive being born at 24 weeks, but many do not

Those who do survive premature birth, often face profound physical, sensory and intellectual disabilities

In a state with higher than the national poverty rates, these disabilities could financially cripple a family

The biggest cause of bankruptcy in the USA is medical debt

Those who are down are being made to stay down

Considering that the places that are doing this already have parlous, world-losing infant mortality, and are supposedly doing this for babies... wouldn't you expect them to have taken any steps to reduce infant mortality in other ways?

Instead, the worst states for infant mortality are the worst states for abortion provision. You'd expect these leading lights of women's and children's health provision to be leading the charge to reduce infant mortality. Instead, you can pretty much lay the maps over each other and the same states that are 'saving' babies are also killing them in great numbers.

Which is one of the many reasons it's obvious it's not about babies.

The implied argument here seems to be that abortion reduces infant mortality due to preventing the existence of babies with certain abnormalities.

I can't say that I find that a particularly convincing argument, it's really just that the deaths are being counted in a different place.

Of course this is happening. Ob-Gyns are leaving forced birth states because now they are told that it's better to let women die along with a foetus than to save the woman with an abortion, and if they intervene before she is on the brink of death they will be charged with performing an illegal abortion. So this is what results. Barbaric.

I should add I do not blame the ob-gyns for getting out. Imagine having to watch someone die, totally preventably, because you can't necessarily call correctly when they are close enough to death for you to legally intervene?

There is nothing misleading about removing a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.

@ThejoyofNC what are you personally doing to make women's lives better? Children's lives better? Because more women would carry to term if they were fed, clothed, housed, could leave violent relationships, could afford healthcare for themselves and their children, knew if they had a disabled child they could rely on high quality care and respite.

Some believers seem to believe in life before birth and after death but forget entirely about the bit in the middle.

@ThejoyofNC less than 1% of abortions happen at 21 weeks or later and the vast majority of those abortions will be because a severe medical issue will have been discovered.

The idea that someone would prefer to traumatise the mother and effectively torture a baby until it dies anyway is i comprehensible to me. And for what ? A baby that lived a few hours or even days in terrible pain ?

If this is really your view you need to own it and take the consequences- ie that people will think you are a monster.