The pro-life movement is a pyramid scheme that scams the poor and violates human rights and we have no choice but to abolish it. My latest for @marieclaire. #DefundTheProLife
marieclaire.com/politics/a3301…
marieclaire.com/politics/a3301…
I know what you’re thinking. Defund it?! Doesn’t the pro-life movement get most of its money from religious organizations and corporations? Yes, it does! But it also gets a giant portion from you! The American tax-payer!
In the last 5 years, abortion bans have cost tax-payers more than 10 million dollars. In Texas alone (a state that tried to give women who get abortions the death penalty), tax-payers have paid almost six million dollars in legal fees, travel fees and filling claims.
In 2018 alone, fake clinics received a total of $40.5 million in taxpayer dollars across 14 states. Given that almost 7 out of 10 Americans like Roe v. Wade it is absurd that so much of their money goes to doing what they explicitly do not want.
The pro-life movement also transfers the financial burden of prevented constitutional rights onto the poor. Being denied an abortion makes you 4 times more likely to live under the poverty line and more likely to get evicted and file for bankruptcy.
Similarly to the police, the pro-life movement doesn’t even do what you think it does. We’ve been conditioned to believe that the pro-life movement reflects religious beliefs, but it created them when segregation was no longer a wedge issue the religious right could rely on.
The pro-life movement isn’t even pro life. Research shows that the lack of access to abortion in a state increases maternal and infant mortality in those states and explains why the maternal mortality rate in Washington, DC is worse than in Syria. nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…
The pro-life movement exacerbates the abysmal racial gaps in maternal and infant mortality rates where Black mothers being up to 6 times more likely to die in childbirth compared to white mothers, by targeting clinic closures in poor and marginalized communities.
Abolishing the pro-life movement would mean a massive reinvestment of millions of dollars of public funds into clinics and life-saving care for communities of color who are unfairly punished by a racist health care system that discriminates against them.
#DefundTheProLife isn’t women's struggle, it’s everyone’s struggle. Your hard-earned tax payer money, regardless of your gender, is being spent on further endangering those who are already vulnerable. People of all genders have a stake in this fight.
