Opinion | Post-birth abortions? Alabama is specializing in them

Alabama is killing babies. By the hundreds. 

It is doing so intentionally and callously, turning a blind eye to the known suffering of both mothers and their newborn infants, leaving them to die in record numbers. 

In 2023, according to statistics released Thursday by the Alabama Department of Public Health, the state saw a dramatic increase in its already much-higher-than-the-U.S. average rate of infant mortality. It spiked to 7.8 deaths per 1,000 live births – up from 6.7 in 2022 – with 449 newborns dying before reaching their first birthday. 

The causes were the same as they’ve always been, only with the addition of a forced-birth mandate in this state thanks to our draconian abortion ban and the subtraction of several birthing centers and further limitations on access to prenatal medical care for impoverished mothers. 

These were all things our lawmakers promised to address in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade’s right to abortion care in this country. Our elected officials, particularly the Republican women who were trotted out in front of media repeatedly in the weeks after the decision, promised to devote more funding to prenatal care and maternal access to health care. 

Oh boy, were we ever going to get this health care issue fixed and make sure these babies that we were saving received the appropriate health care, and that their mothers — many of whom were in no position, either financially or mentally, to carry a pregnancy to term — were going to be taken care of. The churches who fought for this ban, the religious zealots who had spent day after day harassing women out front of abortion clinics and the pandering politicians were going to make sure that those babies were taken care of. They told us so. 

They’ve all done diddly squat. 

Today, two years after the Dobbs decision, mothers have far less access to care in Alabama. Impoverished pregnant women in some counties have to travel nearly an hour to receive basic care and wait weeks to receive necessary, routine tests. 

Just in the past year, at least four maternity wards have been closed in this state due to a lack of funding, leaving entire counties without labor and delivery services. The March of Dimes issued a report last year that noted more than a third of Alabama mothers live in “maternity care deserts.” Nearly one-third of mothers don’t have a birthing hospital within 30 minutes of where they live, compared to the national average of NINE PERCENT, and in some areas in south Alabama mothers have to travel more than an hour to find a labor and delivery hospital.

Still, our state leaders have refused to expand Medicaid – a move that almost certainly would have saved those labor and delivery units, along with the dozens of rural hospitals that have closed over the past decade. 

But then, our lawmakers were busy focusing on the important stuff, like belittling transgender kids and taking public tax dollars from public schools to pay for rich kids to go to private schools.  

In the meantime, we’re one of the top-five unhealthiest states in the nation, we have an infant mortality rate that would shame third-world countries and there are likely undiscovered native tribes in undeveloped countries with better access to health care. 

And none of this is new. 

We’ve been talking about the lack of access to care, the closing of rural hospitals (even Republicans often refer to it as “a real crisis” when in front of a camera) and the incredibly high rate of uninsured people in this state for multiple decades now. And always with the vague indication that the people with the ability to fix all of it – or even just attempt at any point to meaningfully address it – were going to do … something. 

Then they went and built a billion dollar-plus prison. And told us at the same time that the money just ain’t there for that dadgum Medicaid expansion. 

Except it is and we all know it. What they lack, however, is the political will and political courage to step up and do a complicated thing, maybe even an unpopular thing among the base supporters of ALGOP politicians. So, instead, we’re cool with letting babies and mothers die by the hundreds, even though most of them could be saved by simple, basic care. 

You know, back during the run up to the 2024 presidential election, there was a lot of talk of so-called “post birth abortions.” Donald Trump, and other Republicans, kept insisting that “tha lib’ruls” in blue states were killing babies even after they were born alive – intentionally withholding necessary medical care until the newborn died. Democrats and news outlets pressed Trump and others for any example of this, and when none could be provided, the whole thing was written off as yet another Trump lie designed to fool susceptible people into anger. 

But guess what? 

As it turns out, post-birth abortions are indeed real. And Alabama is specializing in them.