Since abortion law has been put back to each state, maternal mortality has increased
The USA’s MMR went from 32.9 in 2021 to 22.3 in 2022. It’s been below 21 since December 2022 and below 20 provisionally for 20224 so far.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/provisional-maternal-deaths-rates.htm (figure 1, click the + for data table)
And it’s speculation that lack of abortion access has led to this. Covid deaths in pregnancy, lack of other health care, generally shit care of women all plays a role. It’s been generally rising steadily for decades, jumped up in Covid, then dropped again.
There’s no doubt lack of access to abortion threatens women’s lives. But deaths correlating with Trump’s actions is speculative.
Trump’s claim that he will protect women is worse than laughable. It is obscene.
So is Harris’s. She won’t protect women in sport. In contact sport. In schools. In college competitions. In the changing rooms. She won’t protect children from being sterilised. She won’t protect girls from having mastectomies. She won’t protect women in prisons who are housed with violent male offenders. She won’t protect those women and girls.
That’s the bind, isn’t it? Whose lack of protection of women is going to make the biggest difference to those voters? It works both ways. When abortion rights worsen the Democrats will tell Trump voters “you voted for this.” When another girl gets sexually assaulted by a trans identifying boy the Republicans will tell the Harris voters “you voted for this.”
I find Trump despicable, but I find it equally despicable that there isn’t a genuine option to protect women’s rights in their entirety.