Hey, it's Mother's Day!
If you're a mom, I hope you got flowers or chocolates and/or breakfast in bed—and not a Trump Bible or a Handmaid's costume.
This Mother's Day, Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama is back in the news, having dropped what X user Art Candee calls a "super cringe video" that proves "she didn't learn her lesson about overacting and not coming across as a serial killer."
Senator Britt's pre-Mother's Day announcement was all about the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed—aka "MOMS"—Act she's just introduced.
But does this new bill—co-sponsored by other "Earthen Vessel"-loving GOP Senators—actually help women succeed?
Spoiler alert: No.
According to Jezebel, the bill is actually about "pushing forced motherhood, attempting to bolster the surveillance of pregnant people, and legally recognizing unborn embryos as people."
The MOMS Act has at its centerpiece a new website called Pregnancy.gov which excludes any information about abortion clinics. Pregnant girls and women would be offered "resources" only from nonprofit clinics known to provide inaccurate medical information while explicitly seeking to dissuade women from seeking abortions.
As Robin Marty, an advocate for abortion access who also runs the West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa, told AL.com: “Alabama lost three labor and delivery wards in the last 12 months, and dumping federal grant money into pregnancy resource centers so there is more funding for diapers and formula after birth isn’t going to fix that medical gap.”
According to Huffington Post, the bill also "notes that the website’s users can consent for their contact information to be used by the government, which may 'conduct outreach via phone or email' to share 'additional resources that would be helpful.'"
As Shannon Watts pointed out on X, the same people looking to "create a federal database of pregnant women" also oppose creating a "federal database of gun owners."
Make America Alabama?
Covid criminal and notorious Moms for Liberty promoter Ron DeSantis already tried and failed at pitching the idea of "making America Florida."
Why does Sen. Britt think we'd be interested in making America more like woman- and children-hating Alabama?
The new MOMS Act would do nothing to address the incredible dangers and deprivations already facing girls and women in Britt's home state of Alabama. In fact, ten years after saying no to the Medicaid expansion offered by Obamacare in 2014, Alabama now has the worst maternal mortality rate in the nation.
As AL.com reported in August 2023:
Alabama’s overall maternal mortality rate is 64.63 deaths per 100,000 births, nearly double the national rate of 34.09. For Black women in Alabama, that number skyrockets to 100.07, which is much higher than the national average of 68.6. The United States maternal mortality rate is significantly higher than other developed nations. For example, Canada’s rate is around 8.4.
In other words, if you're Black and pregnant in Alabama, you're 12X more likely to die than if you're a pregnant woman in Canada.
But Republicans like Katie Britt don't want to address that.
Nor do they want to address the dangers facing Black babies in Alabama.
As Alabama Reflector reported in March 2024:
The state infant mortality rate for Black infants was 12.4 per 1,000 live births in 2022, an increase over the 11 deaths per 1,000 in 2018. For white infants, the mortality rate in 2022 was 4.3 per 1,000, an all-time low.
Black infants are nearly 3X as likely to die before age five than white infants in Alabama. So even though Black babies represent only 28% of births in the state, they account for more than 51% of all infant deaths.
There are easy ways to fix this:
Alabama is one of 10 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid, which would provide care for more mothers during and after pregnancy.
Meanwhile, the state's relentless attacks on reproductive healthcare, combined with recent closures of maternity wards, are only making the situation for Alabama's moms and would-be moms even more dire.
Republicans like Katie Britt say they want moms to succeed, but that success is only possible when women and families have access to basic reproductive healthcare and the freedom to make their own choices about their lives and their bodies.
That success is only possible when women—especially Black women—survive childbirth.
That success is only possible when babies—especially Black babies—make it through infancy.
There are basic, proven steps that would make an immediate difference to maternal and infant mortality rates in Alabama. And experts say 75% of maternal mortality in Alabama is preventable.
But extremists like Katie Britt would prefer to turn the whole country into Gilead than to make Alabama as safe as it should be for pregnant women and babies.
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PS: Is Katie Britt's act all for an audience of one?
The shamelessness with which Katie Britt has re-inserted herself onto the scene comes at a moment when Gov. Kristi Noem is in the MAGA doghouse, Marjorie Taylor Greene is becoming a distinct embarrassment within (not just without) the GOP, and Trump is making clear that loser Kari should go jump in a lake.
Maybe Britt believes that being selected to deliver the party's 2024 State of the Union response put her in the running to become Trump's VP.
Even after that disaster, she might also think that bouncing back like a reprogrammed Stepford Wife is a quality Trump will appreciate. After all, being impersonated by Scarlett Johansson on SNL at least makes Britt "Ivanka-adjacent."
But Britt will have to impress Trump fast. As I predicted a year ago—and no matter how firmly Trump denies the rumors now—it may turn out that Nikki Haley is the last credible option standing by the time Trump finally picks his 2024 running mate.
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