Women

Thom Hartmann - While many in the anti-abortion movement argue that they’re just trying to “save (unborn) lives,” their behavior exposes a much more sinister aspect to their motivation. Their real goal is to disempower women and elevate the role and power of men in the home, the workplace, and in politics.

The argument these Republicans make is that American women should become traditional wives, or tradwives, devoted to serving their husbands’ every need, setting aside their life’s goals for housekeeping and child rearing, and living a life of economic and political impotence.

Right at the top here, let’s stipulate that there’s nothing wrong with a woman wanting to become a tradwife. It’s a lifestyle with a long history that goes all the way back to women’s roles specified in the Bible.There’s an entire tradwife movement that’s been growing across the conservative social media world, including a major presence on Reddit and Facebook.

My mother was a tradwife — she stayed home and raised 4 boys (and then two grandchildren) for most of her life — and appeared to love the life she and my dad had. It was her choice, not something my father had imposed on her. And that’s the key: choice.

It’s one thing to argue that American society is and should be accepting of a wide variety of lifestyles for men and women, from academia to a working life to being a tradwife; it’s another thing altogether to reorganize society so one of those lifestyles is imposed on people by the force of law.

And that’s exactly what the GOP is trying to do. 

NBC News - The number of women going through pregnancy without prenatal care is growing — even though the overall number of babies born in the U.S. is falling, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The lopsided trend, published Tuesday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, may reflect, in part, a growing number of women unable to access OB/GYN care after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“In many counties, you can’t even find a prenatal care provider,” said Dr. Brenna Hughes, executive vice chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “If you have limited resources and have to travel to be able to access prenatal care, it is going to be a deterrent.”

The percentage of mothers without any prenatal care rose from 2.2% in 2022 to 2.3% in 2023, the CDC’s analysis of birth certificates found. Even that slight increase could be detrimental to the health of both mom and baby, said Dr. Kathryn Lindley, a cardio-obstetrician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.   “There’s a lot of baby monitoring that goes on during pregnancy to help us identify any potential health problems,” such as birth defects or unusually high blood pressure, she said.