Red states would rather let a patient die than let her terminate a dangerous pregnancy. And they’re barely pretending otherwise.
For many years before S.B. 8 passed in Texas and was then swept into existence by the Supreme Court, and before Dobbs ushered in a more formal regime of forced childbirth six months later, the groups leading the charge against reproductive rights liked to claim that they loved pregnant women and only wanted them to be safe and cozy, stuffed chock-full of good advice and carted around through extra-wide hallways for safe, sterile procedures in operating rooms with only the best HVAC systems.
Then Dobbs came down and within minutes it became manifestly clear that these advocates actually viewed pregnant people as the problem standing in the way of imaginary, healthy babies—and that states willing to privilege fetal life would go to any and all lengths to ensure that actual patients’ care, comfort, informed consent, and very survival would be subordinate.
We are only beginning to understand the extent to which pregnant women are dying and will continue to die due to denials of basic maternal health care, candid medical advice, and adequate treatment.
The issue is that most states (yes, even Republican states) are pretty purple when you look at the straight numbers. But many states are gerrymandered to hell, and liberals are less likely to vote (for a variety of reasons, including everything from apathy to outright disenfranchisement,) so the conservatives are able to keep a hold on the states even though they rarely hold a popular majority.
There are a lot of liberal people who didn’t vote for this, who are essentially trapped with no way to escape. They’re the ones stuck in a daily grind; too poor, no marketable skills to allow them to find decent work elsewhere, no outside connections to rely on, etc. They don’t deserve what the state is doing to them, but they’re powerless to stop it.
Sure, there are some states that are just hard conservative. But most states are comprised of highly populated liberal cities, surrounded by huge swaths of rural conservatives. And those cities have their voting districts broken up so much by gerrymandering, that they don’t get any decent representation.