'Bodies are piling up': Reporter finds GOP-led states are hiding abortion ban death toll
'Bodies are piling up': Reporter finds GOP-led states are hiding abortion ban death toll
Some Republican-led states that passed near-total abortion bans have mysteriously stopped collecting statistics on maternal mortality over the last couple of years — and some observers suspect it's not a coincidence, wrote Susan Rinkunas for MSNBC.This comes as reports begin to trickle in of cases o...
Summary
Republican-led states with near-total abortion bans are delaying or halting maternal mortality reviews, raising concerns about efforts to conceal rising deaths.
Texas, where maternal deaths rose 56% from 2019 to 2022, refused to review 2022-2023 cases, citing a backlog.
Investigations found multiple preventable deaths tied to abortion bans, such as Porsha Ngumenzi, who died after being denied miscarriage care.
Georgia fired its entire Maternal Mortality Review Committee after leaks about preventable deaths.
Critics argue these actions aim to suppress evidence linking abortion bans to maternal fatalities, delaying accountability for years.
Texas ... refused to review 2022-2023 cases, citing a backlog.
"There's too many cases of maternal death, so we're just going to stop looking at them."
Good job, Texas.
Like the hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits that piled up over the decades.
Boxes about the size of a hardcover book each held evidence of a reported sexual assault – dried swabs of saliva and semen and blood, strands of hair, debris scraped from under fingernails. Each was collected from a person, most of them women and girls, during an hours long exam. And each was shelved without being processed for DNA. The evidence crowded storerooms, tangible proof of law enforcement’s failure to support victims and hold rapists accountable.
Testing the kits was supposed to be the first step in righting that wrong. In some places that received federal grants, not even that happened.
At least a dozen grant recipients carved out exceptions to testing, leaving kits unprocessed for a second time. In one California county, officials boasted they had cleared their backlog, but only after deeming more than half of their kits ineligible for testing.
In many cases, officials have done little beyond sending the kits to a lab, reviewing the results and again closing the files. In Maryland, according to a state report, some law enforcement agencies have shown “significant reluctance” to reopen investigations and have even stated outright that they are disregarding DNA matches.
What’s more, some officials all but abandoned the idea of providing victims answers about what happened to their rape kits or apologies for how long testing took. One Kansas police agency has tried to reach just 17 victims from roughly 1,100 sexual assault kits. An official there said there are instances where DNA testing has identified the names of suspects for the first time but the victims have not been told, because officials don’t think their cases can be prosecuted.
You can’t make an omelette without killing lots of women.
If they were worried about birth rates before...
Red states have had the highest maternal mortality before the abortion ban/restrictions.
Just adding to the pile of bodies.
I hear CEO bodies are piling up.
They say these things come in threes.
Hopefully three—thousand
if there isn't already a mutual aid network then start one. Women need to leave states where they have less rights than a dog while they still have the right to leave.
Not everyone has the means and opportunity to pack up and leave a shitty state.
if there isn't already a mutual aid network then start one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_aid
Give them the means and opportunity
They're saying it's our job to get them out.
This is what they want. Getting pregnant in red states is literally too dangerous. Their birth rate is going to hot rock bottom in the next 4 years. Women communicate about this stuff, so even if the government isn't reporting on it but the rates are so high every women will eventually know someone personally that died because of these bans.
They're not targeting us, they're targeting future women that won't know anything about rape, sexual assault, sex Ed, etc. once they complete dismantling the education system. If this trend continues, they're gonna get what they want. Organize, and be vocal outside of lemmy. Yes we're all talking about it, but no one else is. Talk about it, be unfriended, stand up or shut up.
And as a quick aside, imagine being such a colossal pussy, that you have to dictate what other people do because you're afraid of women and or your own sexuality. These are the people we're talking about about. I used to think that "oh no one is better than anyone else" but we absolutely have to be better than these people. They're fucking monsters and they're going to keep ruining our shit.
And then it will be normal and not a big deal
That’s my concern. It’ll go the way of climate change and school shootings.
The narrative will shift from “it doesn’t happen” to “there’s nothing we can do to stop it” to “why even bother? It’s normal so it’s not a big deal.”
To be fair, they can get away with this just because the anti-choice stance is so ravenous they have a self-righteous-sized blind spot for preventable suffering of others.
Sadly, this won’t be covered broadly enough or penetrate the bubbles it needs to for opinion to change. Even in 2024 only 9% of voters listed abortion as their most important issue. Where 48% listed inflation, “the economy”, or immigration as their most important issue. Draw from that what you will, but I don’t think the average voter understands the … externalities of strong anti-abortion measures.
Thank goodness none of them were CEOs!
Piles!
