Oh, Mississippi. I try, you know, I really try not to stereotype. But Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, when you have some Critter named Bubba gloating about the prospect of women impaling themselves with coathangers in the name of morality, you make it really, really difficult.
Background on this story-in case you haven't noticed, Mississippi state government has been taken over by a crop of reactionary lunatics. Last month, tea-bag Governor Phil Bryant signed a bill that would require all abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, the thing is that thanks to the slew of odious TRAP laws (see they call it that because they TRAP women into unwanted pregnancies, lolz!) and general anti-choice insanity, abortion providers have pretty much been driven out of the state. The only abortion providers now live in Alabama, and drive in once a week. It is next to impossible for an out of state provider to get admission privileges, therefore this new law effectively wipes out the possibility of getting an abortion in the state of Mississippi. Something that suits GOP Lawmaker Bubba Carpenter just fine:
“We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital…
“It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to– Roe vs. Wade. So we’ve done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.’ That’s what we’ve heard over and over and over.
“But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. This became law and the governor signed it, and I think for one time, we were first in the nation in the state of Mississippi.”
Oh, but it gets worse. When asked by Laura Conway of
Maddow Blog to defend his statement, he decided to serve up his misogyny with a side of racism and blamed black people:
"That was what a lot of our critics on the House floor said during the debate. That was just some language that some of the African-Americans used."
Oh, well in that case!
I wonder if it ever occured to Bubba that there may be a reason that African Americans used this argument? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that people of color are disproportionately affected by anti-choice policies?
From The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy
One stark indication of the prevalence of illegal abortion was the death toll. In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women—nearly one-fifth (18%) of maternal deaths recorded in that year. The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200, but illegal abortion still accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth that year. And these are just the number that were officially reported; the actual number was likely much higher.
Poor women and their families were disproportionately impacted. A study of low-income women in New York City in the 1960s found that almost one in 10 (8%) had ever attempted to terminate a pregnancy by illegal abortion; almost four in 10 (38%) said that a friend, relative or acquaintance had attempted to obtain an abortion. Of the low-income women in that study who said they had had an abortion, eight in 10 (77%) said that they had attempted a self-induced procedure, with only 2% saying that a physician had been involved in any way.
These women paid a steep price for illegal procedures. In 1962 alone, nearly 1,600 women were admitted to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City for incomplete abortions, which was one abortion-related hospital admission for every 42 deliveries at that hospital that year. In 1968, the University of Southern California Los Angeles County Medical Center, another large public facility serving primarily indigent patients, admitted 701 women with septic abortions, one admission for every 14 deliveries.
A clear racial disparity is evident in the data of mortality because of illegal abortion: In New York City in the early 1960s, one in four childbirth-related deaths among white women was due to abortion; in comparison, abortion accounted for one in two childbirth-related deaths among nonwhite and Puerto Rican women.
Even in the early 1970s, when abortion was legal in some states, a legal abortion was simply out of reach for many. Minority women suffered the most: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in 1972 alone, 130,000 women obtained illegal or self-induced procedures, 39 of whom died. Furthermore, from 1972 to 1974, the mortality rate due to illegal abortion for nonwhite women was 12 times that for white women.
Yeah, see, generally speaking African Americans don't like the idea of their women bleeding to death or dying from septic shock because they are not able to access a procedure that has been ruled LEGAL by the highest court in the land. Actually sane people in general don't like that idea, especially since history has shown that abortion rates go UP when it is made illegal. But, hey.
So there you have it folks-GOP anti-choice lawmakers: More than happy to let your daughter impail her own uterus in the name of "morality". Because "pro-life" Mississippi isn't content just to have the highest infant mortality rate in the nation, it needs to distinguish itself as a premier death trap for women as well. Well hey, you have to start somewhere!