Wednesday, September 8, 2021

It probably goes without saying, but just to make sure we’re all clear, we here at Enon Holler World Headquarters are unequivocally pro-choice. Even if some of us are uncomfortable with abortion, we still stand by the concept that “fat men with cigars shouldn’t be deciding what [women] do with [their bodies].” This we see as basic decency, particularly given how many of those “fat men with cigars” have shown themselves to be moral black holes over the years.

Furthermore, we are suspicious of the so-called “pro-life” movement, in both their actions and motivations. While I’m sure a few of them are legitimately concerned with the status of a still-undeveloped zygote, most of the anti-abortion crowd seems more interested in removing women’s agency when it comes to sex. We refer you to the Loretta Lynn tune “The Pill” for more information, but in essence, there’s a lot of people in our culture that does not want women having sex or, if they do have sex, they must get pregnant by the act. Why I don’t know, but there you go.

One of the biggest issues I have with the anti-choice movement – and that’s what they are, let’s be honest – is that they ignore actually living people in favor of those yet-to-develop zygotes we mentioned earlier. I’m not talking about women who wish to get abortions for whatever reason they deem it necessary. As a tangent, no one gets abortion as birth control, but that’s neither here nor there. Abortion is a medical procedure like removing a tumor or putting a stint in one’s heart, and that’s how it should be approached. We will not be taking questions on this matter.

No, our particular ire of this lies with the wretched state for too many actual post-birth babies who’ve already been born. In a nutshell, we’re failing our babies big time, especially here in Mississippi. We lead the country in infant mortality and premature births, as in every other state in the union and Washington, D.C., has fewer babies die during birth or due to being born too early. “Preterm birth” is usually considered around 37 weeks while Mississippi is recording a lot of in utero deaths at 20 weeks. It should be noted that while still legal, abortions aren’t allowed after the 16th week.

The reasons why are legion. It could be the dearth of young mothers with insurance or, for that matter, access to quality prenatal care. It might be the overall unhealthiness of life in the Magnolia State or the general high poverty rate making it tough out of the gate. Over 14 percent of all births in Mississippi are underweight and 67 percent of infant deaths are underweight.

Regardless, this is our baseline. Out of 1,000 births, we register 8.8 deaths as opposed to 6.0 for the rest of the country. That might not seem like much right off, but consider a little over 36,000 new souls come into the Magnolia State each year and it adds up, depressingly so. With this in mind, our boy Ashton Pittman at the superlative Mississippi Free Press has an excellent piece on how the current iteration of COVID-19 is affecting birth rates here and, cousin, it ain’t pretty.

Just some facts and figures to contemplate. Fetal deaths have doubled due to COVID, and we’ve notched 72, twice the expected figure. In the past four weeks, COVID has killed eight pregnant women and more small children have died from it in the past month than in the entire pandemic. Finally, we recorded our first death of an infant due to COVID-17 and it probably won’t be the last.

Gov. Tate Reeves has made much about Mississippi being a “haven for the unborn,” but apparently it’s okay to not give a shit about the already born in this state. Even during a pandemic that’s overwhelming our fragile healthcare system, living babies aren’t as important as keeping women from getting abortions.