Originally published at: Second Idaho hospital will no longer deliver babies | Boing Boing
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Add to that the recent law prohibiting minors from traveling for abortion. Women of Idaho: you deserve better than this! You have a right to better than this!
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Are they planning to rename Idaho “Gilead”?
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This American Life just did a piece on this- now that doctors and nurses can be sued by distant relatives for performing womens’ healthcare, they are fleeing the state of Idaho in droves.
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Idaho’s message is pretty clear: “Can you reproduce? We don’t want you here.” But what the hell do the existing citizens of Idaho do about it? I imagine we’re going to see the young leave Idaho in droves, more (way more) deaths (not just in pregnancy, but everyone due to general medical staff shortages)… Idaho is going to be less appealing even for the neo-Nazis and “Quiverfull” evangelicals - it’s the worst possible place to try to be pumping out kids. I wonder if the already sparse population will go into freefall…
I keep thinking, absurdly, “what are the Republicans trying to do here, really?” But of course they aren’t trying to do anything other than the obvious (enforce the most toxic patriarchy), and they’re absolutely not giving a single thought to the consequences of their actions. Which is just… an insane way of legislating. Regardless of whether one agrees with their policies, you’d think the total lack of thought going into them would, by itself, be alarming to everyone in the state. (Instead, for Republicans, that seems to actually be appealing.)
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The law of unintended consequences in action.
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So… you can’t have an abortion, but you can’t give birth in a hospital either?
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The idea is that you’re not supposed to have sex. Ever.
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But you’re also supposed to go forth and multiply.
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They’re still trying to work out the details of how to do that without having sex.
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Myeah, but that’s only your MONEY!
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They don’t want gynecologists or obstetricians. They want Axolotl tank technicians.
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if they have an emergency room, you can still show up and give birth, unannounced, in their emergency room. If they have time, they’ll transfer you out if it is safe. But if not, you’ll give birth in the ER… That’s one of the gifts of EMTALA. But having a baby in an emergency room isn’t exactly the best for outcomes (says an ER nurse).
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I’d like to say that this will decrease the number of racist/prepper/Dominionist whackos, but it will probably just negatively impact innocent poor people.
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Shithole States
In essence, yes.
ETA:
Exactly. Before anyone rage-@s me about the “Shithole States” comment, let me be clear; this is what happens when a) we fail to protect all citizens and non-citizens equally at the federal level and b) the people in power only ever represent a vanishingly small percentage of the population, even if a large portion of the population agrees with them and they will remove rights that conflict with their own supremacy if there aren’t iron-clad curbs in place. It’s been happening forever, but since the fight over Obamacare, the GQP leadership has shown that they are more than happy to sacrifice their own citizens for their venal and cruel aims. I predicted then that we would see a further bifurcation of states among ideological lines and this would eventually culminate in closed borders, trapping millions of innocent Americans and refugees behind cruel lines.
Sound familiar?
Edited to finish thought.
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And Texas, and Florida, and Tennessee, and…
There is a rapidly evolving, self-inflicted and possibly not unintentional, desert of healthcare developing in red states. It amazes me that they can’t see what they have done to themselves. And it won’t only affect women, trans, Black snd other targets. It will affect everyone. Of course, the Great and Glorious have resources to travel to the Heathen Realms for decent healthcare, so it won’t actually bother them. God, i hate this timeline.
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In contrast, the Russian government understands that if you want women to keep pumping out kids you need to maintain the medical infrastructure for it.
At first, this atmosphere felt liberating, even empowering. The hormones may have exhausted me, painfully swelled my ovaries and scrambled my memory, but these women and I were in this together. I felt I belonged to a new sisterhood. But it didn’t take long before realizing that my good fortune was inextricably linked to the nationalist politics of Russia and the macho populist patriotism that dominated the country’s television screens.
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Medical assistance with birth frequently involves and requires procedures to maintain the health of the woman that are now considered “abortion” by Idaho’s laws. Since hospitals can’t predict which pregnancies will result in such procedures and end up with doctors being put in jail or the woman’s second cousin suing them decades later, it’s safer to not do any births at all.
For any not familiar with the insane scope of Idaho’s new law, they define “abortion” very broadly and very vaguely. Seemingly half the things that happen during childbirth or pregnancy care fall under it. Not only that, they are holding doctors and nurses personally liable criminally and civilly. On the civil side, they’ve given standing to all relatives of the woman with no time limit. So if a nurse assists with a healthcare procedure that might fall under this law, twenty years from now some cousin might decide we wants a new motorcycle and sue her for it. It really is that insane. What healthcare professional would want to work under that Sword of Damocles?
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Hence, working as intended. They very much would love to go back to a time when women died in childbirth, and let god sort out whether women live or die doing so. It makes women easier to control, if we have that possibility hanging over our heads.
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