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Texas Republicans have done a bang-up job when it comes to passing incredibly outrageous and restrictive abortion legislation this year. Last month, they passed a series of dangerous anti-abortion bills that could actually become law including a ban on insurance coverage for abortions. Then they went so far as to try to make it legal to charge anyone connected with an unlawful abortion with a crime—and by anyone this includes the person who drove the woman to the procedure, and even the receptionist who booked the appointment. But as for addressing pregnancy deaths and trying to actually save women’s lives? Well, that’s too much of a stretch for these lawmakers.
Lawmakers in Texas largely failed to take any significant action to address the state’s skyrocketing rate of pregnancy-related deaths just months after researchers found it to be the highest in not only the U.S., but the developed world.
Legislators introduced proposals to address the issue after a University of Maryland-led study found that the state’s maternal mortality rate doubled between 2010 and 2012. But several key measures didn’t even make it to a vote, falling victim to Republican infighting over other issues.
What’s so hard about this? The state has the highest rate of pregnancy-related death in the developed world. Surely, since these lawmakers are so concerned about saving babies, they could actually find a way to give a crap about the women who are bearing them, too.
This is the ultimate hypocrisy. They don’t care about babies and they don’t care about women or their health. And once again this phenomenon is tied to race, with black women making up a significantly high percentage of the maternal deaths in the state. One Democrat thought that was worth learning more about. His colleagues? Not so much.
State Rep. Shawn Thierry sought to look into one particularly disturbing trend that the Texas task force had found: Black women make up 11 percent of births, but 28 percent of death. Thierry, a Democrat from Houston, wanted to compare the risk of black women in different income brackets.
But Thierry’s bill — which was backed by the Texas Medical Association and American Heart Association — died along with a parade of other proposals after tea party-backed lawmakers, protesting a lack of movement of their own pet issues, used a House procedural maneuver to kill every bill on a legislative calendar that wasn’t supposed to generate debate.
But of course, the Republicans have instead spent oodles of time closing reproductive health clinics and limiting access to important health care for women that could make some of these deaths preventable. And these are the deadly results.
“When you do things like making access to abortions almost impossible, the impact that’s going to have on our states most vulnerable population is worse and worse,” said Marsha Jones, executive director of the Afiya Center, a reproductive justice organization founded by and for black women in Texas.
These lawmakers have completely failed the women of Texas. And because they refused to do anything about this issue, they missed the opportunity to do anything significant for the next several years. The next time Texas’ maternal mortality task force meets (the group of lawmakers working on this issue) is not until 2019. Just exactly how many many pregnant women in the state will die between now and then? This is unconscionable. This is what happens when people play politics with women’s lives. The women of Texas deserve so much better than this.
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