CNN: GOP States That Quickly Banned Abortion Ignoring The Needs of Moms and Kids

CNN: GOP States That Quickly Banned Abortion Ignoring The Needs of Moms and Kids

A recent CNN report highlights that since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, GOP-led states like Iowa and Missouri, among others, moved very quickly to rip away reproductive rights while doing very little to follow through on pledges to support mothers and children, writing: “CNN’s review of dozens of pledges made and bills introduced to help mothers and children living in a post-Roe America found little action, either in Washington or in state capitals where abortion bans were quickly put in place.” 

CNN added: “In several places where politicians have spoken at length about the need to do more to help mothers and children, like in Iowa, or where bills were introduced only to stall out, like in Missouri, any substantive laws passed related to the post-Dobbs reality have only solidified those restrictions.”

The report specifically called out Republican governors Kim Reynolds and Mike Parson. Parson’s legislation following the Roe decision was a bill that“cut Medicaid funding to the remaining Planned Parenthood facilities in the state performing non-abortion-related health care.” Meanwhile, Reynolds, who vowed to “promote policies designed to surround every person involved in a pregnancy with protection, love, and support,” has yet to sign legislation that achieves these goals.

Read more from CNN on how GOP led states are banning abortion while refusing to help mothers and children:

• CNN’s review of dozens of pledges made and bills introduced to help mothers and children living in a post-Roe America found little action, either in Washington or in state capitals where abortion bans were quickly put in place.

• Few of those new laws are about mothers during their pregnancies or after. Few address child care, for infants or beyond. Even as independent researchers find the number of births going up – as well as higher rates of maternal and infant mortality and greater economic insecurity – in states where abortions are most limited, there’s been little substantive legislative action in response.

• Because of a “trigger law” waiting on the books, Missouri’s ban on abortions except to save the life of the mother kicked in only six minutes after the Dobbs decision was announced.

• The end result in Missouri is that in the two-and-a-half years since Dobbs, the only measures meant to address the fallout amount to a few million dollars’ worth of legislation, including tax credits for adoption and tax exemptions for child care facilities.

• “It’s a shame that they have been able to take hold of a phrase that means so much for so many people,” Quade said. “When I say I’m a pro-life legislator, it’s because I want women to have health care and aren’t sent home to bleed out because they’re not close enough to death.”

• A few hundred miles away in Iowa, anti-abortion leaders made big promises about how they would address the consequences of Dobbs. But the most significant action was legislating around court challenges to a law that restricts abortion to as early as six weeks.

• When Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the law “prohibiting and requiring certain actions relating to abortion involving the detection of a fetal heartbeat, and including effective date provisions” in July 2023, she also cited the “culture of life,” explaining that “as a pro-life governor, I will continue to promote policies designed to surround every person involved in a pregnancy with protection, love, and support.”

• Despite those earlier statements, no bills about adoption or contraception access have passed in Iowa. Zach Wahls, a Democratic state senator in Iowa, told CNN that in his chamber, he couldn’t even get a subcommittee hearing for a “right to contraception” bill he co-sponsored, arguing that anti-abortion leaders in the state “abandoned Iowa women by failing to adopt basic protections.”

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