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   From: NOT-SURE@idiocracy.gov   
      
   On 6/26/22 9:15 AM, edell@post.com wrote:   
   > So much for the preciousness of life according to right wingers.   
   >   
   > ---------   
   >   
   > The precise effect on new births from the 22 states set to enact broad   
   abortion bans now that Roe v. Wade is overturned is impossible to predict. But   
   public health experts like Diana Greene Foster — the lead researcher on the   
   Turnaway Study, an    
   enormous survey project that tracked the long-term effects of receiving or   
   being denied an abortion — expect a meaningful increase in the number of   
   women with an unwanted pregnancy who nevertheless give birth. Middlebury   
   College economics professor    
   Caitlin Knowles Myers anticipates as many as 75,000 people who want an   
   abortion but can’t get one will end up giving birth in the first year after   
   Roe is overturned.   
   >   
   > Those births will predominately be in the states with the most draconian   
   post-Roe abortion restrictions. And with a few exceptions, those 22 states   
   rank in the bottom half of states in the comprehensive support they provide to   
   children and their    
   families, according to the State-by-State Spending on Kids Dataset compiled by   
   Brown University’s Margot Jackson and her colleagues. The disparities can be   
   enormous: Vermont spends three times as much money on education, health care,   
   and other economic    
   support for children as Utah.   
   >   
   > Families will be adding a new child in states that have made it harder for   
   them to afford food and housing. More children could end up living in poverty,   
   their households struggling to pay for bare necessities. Research suggests   
   their parents will be    
   less likely to purchase items that help with the child’s development, and   
   they may struggle to hit early milestones compared to their peers in other   
   states.   
   >   
   > The children born in these circumstances will start life a few steps behind,   
   all because their political leaders strove to ban abortion without offering   
   support to the children who would be born if their aims were achieved.   
   >   
   > People often get abortions because they worry about the economics   
   > Ultimately, abortion bans may mean more babies are born to people uncertain   
   of their ability to take care of them, in states that refuse to provide for   
   them. As documented in the Turnaway Study, women often cite their finances or   
   wanting to take care    
   of the children they already have when explaining why they’d want an   
   abortion.   
   >   
   > “Most women seeking abortions are already experiencing financial   
   hardships,” Foster writes in her 2020 book. Specifically, about half of the   
   1,000 women who participated in the Turnaway Study were living in poverty, a   
   number consistent with    
   national averages of women terminating a pregnancy. Three-fourths of the women   
   in the study said they already didn’t have enough money for food, housing,   
   and transportation.   
   >   
   > According to the Turnaway Study’s surveys, 40 percent of women who were   
   seeking an abortion said they were not financially prepared, and 29 percent   
   said they needed to focus on the children they already have. Another 20   
   percent said that having a    
   baby would interfere with their own future opportunities, and 12 percent said   
   they could not provide the kind of life that they would want for their baby.   
   (The participants could give more than one answer and most did.)   
   >   
   > In a 2018 essay, Yale law professor Reva Siegel laid out a number of ways in   
   which that pattern held. For example, none of the 10 most anti-abortion states   
   have passed their own family leave policies; eight of the 10 most permissive   
   states had. Only    
   one of the 10 most restrictive states had enacted protections for pregnant   
   workers. Most did not require that contraception be covered by private health   
   insurance.   
   >   
   > “States with the most abortion restrictions tend to have implemented fewer   
   policies known to support women’s and children’s well-being,” concludes   
   a 2017 overview from the Center for Reproductive Rights and Ibis Reproductive   
   Health. Siegel    
   argues in her review that this discord reveals that these states are more   
   interested in restricting a woman’s reproductive choices than in protecting   
   children’s well-being.   
   >   
   > It’s not just how much money a state spends on a family’s welfare but   
   how the money is spent that matters, Jackson told me. Broadly speaking, more   
   progressive states tend to put their spending to direct assistance —   
   “sending families a check”    
   — while more conservative states expend their dollars for specific services,   
   such as pregnancy prevention or marriage promotion. The first is more   
   effective in keeping families out of poverty than the second. One 2019 paper   
   published in Socio-Economic    
   Review by Columbia University’s Zachary Parolin found that states   
   instituting policies that prioritize discouraging lone motherhood over   
   providing cash assistance had impoverished about 250,000 Black children yearly.   
   >   
   > Republican-led states are also more likely to close off access to welfare by   
   restricting eligibility, such as through so-called family caps, which deny   
   families that are already enrolled in the Temporary Assistance for Needy   
   Families program any    
   additional assistance if they have another child. According to the Center on   
   Budget and Policy Priorities, 12 states, largely concentrated in the South,   
   still have such laws on the books.   
   >   
   > When people denied an abortion end up giving birth, their fears about their   
   financial ability to raise a child tend to come true. “We find that the   
   reasons women give for wanting an abortion strongly predict the consequences   
   they experience when they    
   are denied that abortion,” Foster wrote.   
   >   
   > The Turnaway Study looked at women’s economic well-being six months after   
   they either received an abortion or were denied one. Researchers found that 61   
   percent of those who were turned away were living in poverty compared to 45   
   percent of those who    
   received an abortion. The first group was significantly more likely to be poor   
   over the next four years.   
   >   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)