The ban on abortion in several states in the United States continues to wreak havoc. Latest evidence to date in Texas, where more and more babies are found abandoned in trash cans, ditches, garbage trucks and on sidewalks, reports the Washington Post.
Texas’ abortion ban, which took effect in 2021, is one of the toughest in the country. It makes no exceptions, even in cases of rape or incest, leaving women without legal recourse to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. These drastic bans have caused dramatic social and health consequences, including an increase in infant mortality and morbid abandonment.
According to figures from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, there have been at least 18 cases of child abandonment in 2024. A figure twice as high as that documented ten years ago, underlines the American media. The phenomenon of infant abandonment seems to have taken on worrying proportions, comparable to “a kind of epidemic”comments a Houston County police official, after the discovery of the body of a baby in a ditch this summer, found by a landscaping maintenance crew.
One of the most restrictive laws
These dramatic abandonments are one of the consequences of the ban on abortion in the state, which already has the highest percentage of women without access to medical care in the country, not to mention the undignified access to prenatal care, notably for people without private insurance or without immigration status.
In addition to the increase in infant abandonment, Texas, for example, has one of the highest teenage birth rates in the country, with more than 20 births per 1,000 adolescents aged 15 to 19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared to 13.6 nationally. The state also has the thirteenth highest maternal mortality rate, with approximately 28 deaths per 100,000 live births.
On the political side, the evidence does not seem to shock. On the contrary, the state’s Republican leaders preferred to further reduce funding for women’s health and reproductive health care, thus making the situation worse. They also cut funding for an awareness campaign informing mothers of alternatives if they choose not to keep their child, reports the Washington Post. And this, although the State benefits from a budget surplus of more than $30 billion. The famous American dream.
Source: www.slate.fr
