AMERIKA
Editorial: Your tax dollars at work ... suppressing women2023/06/09
Signage outside the Planned Parenthood Reproductive Health Services Center in St. Louis, Missouri on June 24, 2022. -
ANGELA WEISS/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS
Missouri’s political leaders have already reached into the personal medical decisions of women across the state, and have attempted to reach into the ballot process to prevent the public from reversing the state’s extremist abortion ban. Now they’re also reaching into Missourians’ very pockets, in a few different ways, using tax dollars to continue to push ideologically based anti-choice messages that polls show majorities of Missourians don't want.
What exactly is the point of spending potentially more than $1 million in state funds over the next four years on a marketing campaign designed to convince women not to seek abortions, when that choice is currently almost entirely illegal in Missouri anyway? And what is the justification for spending millions more on tax credits to reimburse citizens for donations made to anti-abortion organizations that employ sometimes controversial methods?
Literally minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Missouri became the first state in America to institute a sweeping new abortion ban. It is as stringent as any in the nation, banning the procedure from the moment of conception in all cases (rape and incest included), except in vaguely defined “medical emergencies.” Doctors who violate the ban can face up to 15 years in prison.
Before and since that law was enacted, the Legislature’s Republican majority has signaled its intention to get even more radical in its determination to deny women their biological autonomy. Among the more chilling ideas thrown around in the state Capitol are to prosecute women themselves, instead of just doctors; to somehow extend Missouri’s ban so that it covers Missouri women even when they leave the state; and to censor what women can see and read about abortion services. Some have even suggested abortion should be a death-penalty offense.
Mindful that this level of extremism doesn’t generally fly even in a red state like Missouri, lawmakers in the recent legislative session also attempted to rewrite the state’s rules regarding ballot referendums, to require supermajority approval instead of just a simple majority of the voters to change the state constitution.
Disingenuous explanations aside, there is no doubt the aim was to prevent Missouri’s voters from rolling back the state’s abortion ban — and there is just as little doubt they will keep trying.
But in their continuing campaign against choice, the state’s leaders aren’t only using their governmental powers. They’re also using tax funds, much of it collected from the very women whose rights they’re suppressing.
As the Post-Dispatch’s Kurt Erickson reports, one element of this is a $266,000 contract signed in April by Gov. Mike Parson’s administration for services from a Columbia marketing firm to help market the state’s existing “Alternatives to Abortion” program.
That $8.3 million program provides adoption assistance, child and infant care and other help to low-income mothers — which, it could be argued, is a virtual obligation for a state that is making young, poor women’s lives significantly harder and more dangerous with its abortion ban.
But the program also works with “pregnancy centers” of the kind that critics say mislead women into thinking they’re getting unbiased medical advice when they’re actually being coaxed to carry out pregnancies whether it’s in their best interests or not.
A look at the online presence of the program’s new marketing contractor, Choose Life Marketing, confirms it is a religiously focused organization that is as much about convincing women not to obtain abortions as it is about merely connecting them with support services. Support is one thing; proselytizing on the taxpayers’ dime is quite another. And, again, abortion is already illegal in Missouri anyway, so this is a curious way to spend public money.
If there’s an upside to the marketing contract, it’s that around $1 million in taxpayer funding to push right-wing political ideology is better than doing it with $7 million. That’s about how much Missouri taxpayers lost last year in tax credits that the state gives to people who donate money to pregnancy centers and other anti-abortion entities, according to a ProPublica analysis.
Would perhaps some of this money be better spent on women's health services that don’t come with an underlying mission of convincing them to make choices that serve someone else’s ideological agenda instead of their own health?
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Missouri’s political leaders have already reached into the personal medical decisions of women across the state, and have attempted to reach into the ballot process to prevent the public from reversing the state’s extremist abortion ban. Now they’re also reaching into Missourians’ very pockets, in a few different ways, using tax dollars to continue to push ideologically based anti-choice messages that polls show majorities of Missourians don't want.
What exactly is the point of spending potentially more than $1 million in state funds over the next four years on a marketing campaign designed to convince women not to seek abortions, when that choice is currently almost entirely illegal in Missouri anyway? And what is the justification for spending millions more on tax credits to reimburse citizens for donations made to anti-abortion organizations that employ sometimes controversial methods?
Literally minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Missouri became the first state in America to institute a sweeping new abortion ban. It is as stringent as any in the nation, banning the procedure from the moment of conception in all cases (rape and incest included), except in vaguely defined “medical emergencies.” Doctors who violate the ban can face up to 15 years in prison.
Before and since that law was enacted, the Legislature’s Republican majority has signaled its intention to get even more radical in its determination to deny women their biological autonomy. Among the more chilling ideas thrown around in the state Capitol are to prosecute women themselves, instead of just doctors; to somehow extend Missouri’s ban so that it covers Missouri women even when they leave the state; and to censor what women can see and read about abortion services. Some have even suggested abortion should be a death-penalty offense.
Mindful that this level of extremism doesn’t generally fly even in a red state like Missouri, lawmakers in the recent legislative session also attempted to rewrite the state’s rules regarding ballot referendums, to require supermajority approval instead of just a simple majority of the voters to change the state constitution.
Disingenuous explanations aside, there is no doubt the aim was to prevent Missouri’s voters from rolling back the state’s abortion ban — and there is just as little doubt they will keep trying.
But in their continuing campaign against choice, the state’s leaders aren’t only using their governmental powers. They’re also using tax funds, much of it collected from the very women whose rights they’re suppressing.
As the Post-Dispatch’s Kurt Erickson reports, one element of this is a $266,000 contract signed in April by Gov. Mike Parson’s administration for services from a Columbia marketing firm to help market the state’s existing “Alternatives to Abortion” program.
That $8.3 million program provides adoption assistance, child and infant care and other help to low-income mothers — which, it could be argued, is a virtual obligation for a state that is making young, poor women’s lives significantly harder and more dangerous with its abortion ban.
But the program also works with “pregnancy centers” of the kind that critics say mislead women into thinking they’re getting unbiased medical advice when they’re actually being coaxed to carry out pregnancies whether it’s in their best interests or not.
A look at the online presence of the program’s new marketing contractor, Choose Life Marketing, confirms it is a religiously focused organization that is as much about convincing women not to obtain abortions as it is about merely connecting them with support services. Support is one thing; proselytizing on the taxpayers’ dime is quite another. And, again, abortion is already illegal in Missouri anyway, so this is a curious way to spend public money.
If there’s an upside to the marketing contract, it’s that around $1 million in taxpayer funding to push right-wing political ideology is better than doing it with $7 million. That’s about how much Missouri taxpayers lost last year in tax credits that the state gives to people who donate money to pregnancy centers and other anti-abortion entities, according to a ProPublica analysis.
Would perhaps some of this money be better spent on women's health services that don’t come with an underlying mission of convincing them to make choices that serve someone else’s ideological agenda instead of their own health?
© St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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