The maternal mortality rate has been on the rise in America, the richest country in the world. If forced-birthers in several states have their way in the courts with stringent new abortion restrictions, that rate will go higher still.
Although they aren’t the only states that have passed deceptive “fetal heartbeat” laws, Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio have approved the worst of them. None have yet been implemented, and they are likely to be blocked unless some federal court, perhaps the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, chooses to ignore the nearly half-century-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion nationwide. But that’s the point. Although not all forced-birthers are on board, each of these new laws represents an aggressive new tactic designed to get a case to a Supreme Court whose newest member, Brett Kavanaugh, may be the deciding vote to jettison what he allegedly claimed before his Senate confirmation to Republican Sen. Susan Collins is “settled law.”