If states want to enforce abortion bans, then let’s pay mothers for forced births | Opinion

Earlier this week, the Arizona Supreme Court decided it was legally sound and proper to enforce an 1864 law criminalizing all abortions in the state except when a woman’s life is at stake. The law could take effect as early as June.

The near-total ban on abortion includes no exceptions for rape or incest and was first enacted during the Civil War and nearly a half-century before Arizona became a state in 1912 — and more than a half-century before some women were granted the right to vote.

Under the law, the number of abortions in the state is expected to drop from approximately 1,100 each year to near-zero, according to the Associated Press. Women — especially poor women and women of color — will suffer the most, as they are forced to carry pregnancies both viable and nonviable to their natural conclusion, risking both mother and child’s life, in some cases.

But punishing women is the point of such a law.

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Activist courts, appointed by Republicans, continue to force their religious interpretations on a population rapidly losing faith in the judicial branch of the American government. Less than half of Americans now report having “a great or fair amount” of trust in the judiciary, according to a 2022 Gallup poll. The ACLU has argued persuasively that a conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court has all but discarded the First Amendment’s religious clauses in a way that is “threatening both the independence of religion and the religious neutrality of the state.”

The result is that women and birthing people — and especially women of color — cannot depend on their government to protect their life, liberty or pursuit of happiness.

Arizona is one of 21 states rapidly instituting draconian abortion laws in the wake of the fall of Roe vs. Wade in an attempt to punish women physically, emotionally and financially.

Women denied abortions saw their overdue debts climb by 78%, or $1,750 a year, according to a study profiled in The Washington Post. They experienced bankruptcies, tax liens and evictions at a rate up to 81% more. Women who seek abortions are already disproportionately low-income, women of color and women without a college degree, UC San Francisco demographer Diana Greene Foster told The Post.

A new bill recently introduced in South Carolina could counteract these atrocious mandates, turning the tables on dogmatic and authoritarian lawmakers who claim their concern is for the life of the child, when it’s so clearly about controlling women and legislating morality.

Compensation for forced birth

The South Carolina Pro Birth Accountability Act would require just compensation to women and girls who are denied an abortion under the state’s “heartbeat ban,” which is typically around six weeks into a pregnancy. Compensation would include “reasonable living, legal, medical, psychological and psychiatric expenses.”

The state has some of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates, according to ABC News.

“Just as South Carolina may not constitutionally use a citizen’s rental property without just compensation, it may not constitutionally require a woman to incubate a child without appropriate compensation,” the proposed bill reads.

“A lot of our women and girls in this state will be thrown into vicious cycles of poverty by the six-week abortion ban,” said the sponsor of the bill, South Carolina state Sen. Mia McLeod, in an announcement on X formerly known as Twitter. “Now that we have the six-week abortion ban, I thought it only fitting and appropriate for the state to help cover the escalating costs of prenatal and postnatal care, from conception to college.”

It is an intriguing side step of the state’s abortion ban, which is instituted mere days after a woman might recognize a missed period as a potential pregnancy.

Under this bill, women denied an abortion would be entitled to reasonable expenses relating to all stages of pregnancy and childbirth, including the cost of the child’s healthcare, vision and dental until age 18; automatic eligibility for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Women, Infants & Children Program, with no reduction in benefits until the child is 18; the cost of the child’s higher education; child support in cases of rape or incest; and automatic eligibility for home visits from a pediatric nurse from early pregnancy until the child’s second birthday.

It would also allow pregnant mothers to claim the fetus as a child as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected, and therefore be eligible for child-related federal or state income tax credits or deductions.

Such a bill would hit governments in their budgets, instead of the pocketbooks of women and birthing people. If mothers are not allowed to end an unwanted pregnancy and avoid the approximately $25,000 each year in associated child-rearing costs, then the state should compensate them for the undue burden they have caused.

If states like Arizona and South Carolina want to institute total or near-total abortion bans, then they must be made to recognize the burden they are placing on their state’s families by forcing women to go through childbirth.

I don’t have much hope that McLeod’s bill will survive the South Carolina legislative process — it was first introduced in 2020 and then again in 2023 — but I do hope it will inspire women and birthing people across the country to pressure their legislators to introduce similar bills and thereby directly confront the cruel policies that are directly leading to the destruction of women’s rights.