The Tennessee House has some representatives with some sense left in their brains. SJR0127, which has come up year after year and is an attempt to change the state constitution stating that no woman has the right to an abortion, has once again failed!
The measure sponsored by Rep. Dolores Gresham, a Somerville Republican, was voted down 6-3 Tuesday in the House Public Health and Family Assistance Subcommittee. The bill has repeatedly failed in the Democrat-controlled subcommittee.
The measure, which passed the Senate last month, sought to nullify a state Supreme Court ruling that finds the Tennessee Constitution offers greater protection for abortion rights than the U.S. Constitution.
SJR0127 offered no protection for women that are impregnated from rape or incest, nor when an abortion is needed to protect their health.
I had written about SJR0127 several years ago when basically the same thing happened — that the bill passed the regressive Senate and failed in the House. It is a particularly heinous bill, that gives women of child-bearing age a death sentence. Anyone that would vote in favor for this bill is a woman hater, short and sweet. If they were not a woman hater, they would acknowledge that pregnancy in young women is extremely hazardous. They would acknowledge the third-world maternal mortality rates here in TN and the US, overall. And they would acknowledge that easy access and knowledge about birth control does more to lower the birth rate than treating a woman as a vessel.
And, quite timely, George Monbiot had this article in today’s Guardian (also can be read at Common Dreams) that ties a high abortion rate with conservative religious beliefs.
A study published in the Lancet shows that between 1995 and 2003, the global rate of induced abortions fell from 35 per 1,000 women each year to 29. This period coincides with the rise of the “globalised secular culture” the Pope laments. When the figures are broken down, it becomes clear that, apart from the former Soviet Union, abortion is highest in conservative and religious societies. In largely secular western Europe, the average rate is 12 abortions per 1,000 women. In the more religious southern European countries, the average rate is 18. In the US, where church attendance is still higher, there are 23 abortions for every 1,000 women, the highest level in the rich world. In central and South America, where the Catholic church holds greatest sway, the rates are 25 and 33 respectively. In the very conservative societies of east Africa, it’s 39. One abnormal outlier is the UK: our rate is six points higher than that of our western European neighbours.
Like it or not, a patriarchal system that treats women as nothing more than a vessel, kills those women. Yet, comprehensive sex education, access to contraceptives and an openess to talk about sex LOWERS the teen pregnancy rate AND abortion rate.
But, the very sad reality I see among some of east TN’s young people is a serious lack of knowledge towards protecting themselves and their partners from pregnancy. So, to those young people that have not gotten a comprehensive sex education — here’s a little saying I hope you can remember: Don’t be silly, cover your willy.
For those parents that cannot talk about sex openly to their children, I hope they will at least have the foresight to pass on that saying if they do nothing else. Protect your daughter from pregnancy. It could save her life, at the very least it could save her from a lifetime of being poor and disadvantaged.
I agree that maternal mortality rates are too high in the US, but they are *not* 3rd-world levels–check out this info from UNICEF (http://www.childinfo.org/areas/maternalmortality/countrydata.php). The US is there stated to be 11/100,000, for the year 2005, but it is currently believed to be about 13. Australia is 4; Belgium is 8; Brazil is 110; Burundi is 1100; Ethiopia is 720; Japan is 6; North Korea is 370, and South Korea is 14. I’ve further heard it said that what skews the US stats compared to other modern nations is the racial differences between the US and European nations–that when you compare US whites to European whites then the difference in maternal mortality is small or nonexistent. If you look at any birth statistics from the US, you’ll notice that blacks are consistently worse than whites regardless of rank. I’m not making any racist statements–I tend to think that it’s because blacks are more likely to be poor than whites, or else that their quality of care is worse due to biased care-givers.
Also from UNICEF (http://www.childinfo.org/areas/maternalmortality/) is the following: “The most common fatal complication is post-partum haemorrhage. Sepsis, complications of unsafe abortion, prolonged or obstructed labour, and the hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, especially eclampsia, claim further lives……The foundations for maternal risk are often laid in girlhood. Women whose growth has been stunted by chronic malnutrition are vulnerable to obstructed labour. Anaemia predisposes to haemorrhage and sepsis during delivery and has been implicated in at least 20 per cent of post-partum maternal deaths in Africa and Asia. The risk of childbirth is even greater for women who have undergone female genital mutilation, an estimated 2 million girls every year……Maternal deaths are also relatively rare events, even in high-mortality areas…..”
Most US & TN women are not affected by these third-world conditions, so “prophylactic” abortion cannot be considered as life-saving for most of them. The TN birth rate is 14%, or about 900,000. Assuming 13/100,000 deaths is accurate in TN, that’s 117 TN women that die each year due to maternal complications. The US does need to work on reducing maternal mortality, but increasing abortion in the US and TN would not help much if at all.
Kathy
And you completely neglect that the maternity mortality rates in the US are RISING not going down, and that 40% of these deaths are linked to LACK OF CARE. The actual number is 1 in every 4,800 women do not survive pregnancy/childbirth. Compare that to the women in Ireland, where only 1 in 47,600 women dies from pregnancy/childbirth.
Take a closer look at the UN numbers. The US ranks 41st out of 171 countries. Women in the US have the same odds of surviving pregnancy as women in Belarus.
While you may not believe these rates of deaths as being as bad as they are, for the so-called richest nation in the country to have such high maternal mortality rates is beyond disgusting.
If you’ll check out my blogs, you’ll see that I just wrote a piece about this on each, condemning the fact that the US rates are so poor (and getting worse), and going into this question a little more in-depth. I just didn’t want to clutter your blog w/that, nor write a dissertation. I discuss the US MMR more specifically on the w2w blog and the global MMR on my personal blog (katsyfga), if you’re interested.
The US lifetime risk of death due to pregnancy and childbirth complications is 1/4800, but there are varying risk factors for maternal mortality including race, maternal health, age, number of pregnancies, and quality of health care. Belarus is not “third world”–that designation belongs to the majority of countries of Africa, S. America, and lower Asia. “First world” is Western countries, while “second world” is communist or formerly communistic countries (by the wikipedia definition). The UN number divide countries into 3 tiers: developed, developing, and least developed. To group the US into “third world” nations would be to compare them to African countries such as Sierra Leone, Chad, and Niger. If you look at the numbers for “developing countries” then you’ll see that the average MMR is 450, and the lifetime risk of death is 1/76–a far cry from the US MMR of 11 and lifetime risk of 1/4800. The US’s MMR and lifetime risk of death is higher than it should be, considering that we are the richest country in the world, but it certainly is *not* at “third-world” status.
Believe me, as a childbirth educator, I am *well* acquainted with the quality of care, maternal and infant mortality rates, and the problems associated with them. Every few months I hear something about the poor US ranking, and that it’s getting worse.
Kathy
womantowomancbe.wordpress.com
katsyfga.wordpress.com
Belarus is not third-world country and I didn’t mean to imply as much.
But, as US women lose access to health and state legislatures inject their view of morality onto women, women are suffering. While the MMR is rising, women are being denied access to contraceptives, our children are not being taught comprehensive sex ed, and the unborn is more important than the already living. and that is all pretty messed up, and yes, I feel it is leading the US to third-world status in women’s health care.
I would further clarify that although there are 3 tiers in the UN and 3 tiers in “world” status, they are not identical. If you look at the former communist countries, you’ll see that several of them have MMRs lower than the US and even some lower than obviously Western nations such as Great Britain, France, and Finland. The Czech Republic, for instance, has a MMR of 4, though it would be considered “second world” since it used to be in the Soviet bloc. So you see that since the fall of the Soviet Union, the terms “first world” meaning free democracies and “second world” meaning communist countries, have changed or lost their meaning. And “third world” being everybody else that didn’t fit neatly into the first or second category, is actually divided into 2 groups by the UN–developing and least developed countries.
Kathy
(I made my last comment before I saw your most recent post, so feel free to disregard it–after posting my 2nd comment, I felt like I left something unclear.)
Most women who die as a result of childbirth would not have had an abortion even if there were no negatives associated with it–social, mental, medical, moral, etc. Most women who get pregnant are pregnant by choice, or even if it was accidental or unplanned willingly carry their babies to term (my first child was unplanned). If the life of the mother is in jeopardy, then abortion is available, but these cases are extremely rare, compared to those made for non-medical reasons such as the father of the baby wanted easy sex but didn’t want to have a baby as the result. I’ve heard of many cases of women who died of cancer because they refused to have an abortion so they could take chemo and have a chance at survival. Even knowing they likely would die, they still chose life for their children.
You may feel that this is leading the US to 3rd-world status, but we are a far cry from that, because the root cause of maternal mortality in 3rd-world countries is poverty which leads to poor health–specifically poor nutrition in girlhood, anemia, and unsanitary instruments used in abortions and births. Abortion deaths are counted in maternal mortality. Increasing “safe” abortions in true third-world countries would probably reduce the MMR, but you’d have to have 100,000 abortions to save 2100 Sierra Leoneans. Far better to attack the root causes, and improve maternal health rather than champion abortions. Here’s a website you may wish to explore: globalmidwives.org. (Lest you think it’s a conservative, pro-life site, the woman who sent me the link originally is a pro-abortion lesbian.) This group of people is currently focused on “Salone” because of its high MMR, and they’re working to reduce it by teaching traditional birth attendants safe pregnancy and birth practices. They are in constant need of funds, and will see that money is put to the best use–sterile instruments if need be, or buying iron tablets so that anemia-induced hemorrhage is lower. These things reduce the MMR without the moral or ethical problems of abortion, they’re cheaper, and they improve health over the long-term, rather than just a one-time-per-use thing like abortions.
Most women who die as a result of childbirth would not have had an abortion even if there were no negatives associated with it–social, mental, medical, moral, etc. Most women who get pregnant are pregnant by choice, or even if it was accidental or unplanned willingly carry their babies to term (my first child was unplanned). If the life of the mother is in jeopardy, then abortion is available, but these cases are extremely rare, compared to those made for non-medical reasons such as the father of the baby wanted easy sex but didn’t want to have a baby as the result.
The whole point of SJR0127 was to NOT give women any protections in cases where pregnancy threatened her health. Nor would women impregnated from a rape or incest would have the RIGHT to get an abortion — they would have had to carry that reminder with them for the rest of their lives (because just carrying a baby does not end the reminders of rape or incest). Had it passed the house sub-committee and then the full House, the result would have made women in TN nothing more than vessels — with no rights, whatsoever, for reproductive health care in their best interests.
Women’s “health” is too vaguely defined to be a serious argument for abortion. Most pregnancy conditions will not seriously affect a woman’s health; and in the cases of those that do, abortion is not usually necessary–the baby could be born alive preterm, thus preserving both the baby’s life and the woman’s health. Also, the reminders of rape and incest are in the brain–even if the woman never got pregnant, she would always remember it.
Calling women “nothing more than vessels” is emotional language. I understand it is your opinion, but it is just an opinion, and one I profoundly disagree with.
Kathy
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