The GOP New Parents Act proposal: Take Now, But Pay Much More Later

              WSJ Chart on States’ Child Poverty Levels

The GOP New Parents Act proposal: Take Now, But Pay Much More Later

The backlash against the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs vs Jackson is vast. Ostensible massive protests everywhere. Ultra-right-wing states rushing to make their anti-abortion laws even more stringent, even reaching to apply their laws to the residents (and their medical treatment centers) seeking care in blue states. Pledging to fight for a national abortion ban. Mobile abortion consulting/treatment/surgical centers (large RVs), to be parked in pro-choice states… on their borders with anti-abortion states… are being designed and outfitted. Others are contemplating such facilities offshore, ships anchored outside of state jurisdictions on the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Young women withdrawing their applications to colleges and universities in red states with anti-abortion statutes.

As radical right-wing states deny abortions even for rape, incest or to save a mother’s life, as they tell young women who are seeking abortions to go to term, give birth and accept the “joys” of motherhood… or put their baby for adoption… there is a big missing piece: support for those who do give birth and the children who now must live in society. Women who cannot afford to raise a child, are often too young and irresponsible, forced to stop, put their lives on hold, give up educational opportunities or quit their jobs by reason of exceptionally expensive childcare. Rents and homeownership costs are soaring. Food prices are hitting new levels. Fuel, for heating and air conditioning or simply getting around, is close to prohibitive… so exactly how are these young mothers or young families going to pay for all of these harsh and rising costs?

What is sorely missing in this flurry of red state legislation, including the reactions of red state members of Congress, is the support needed for what could be a mass of additional children born into poverty by reason of the Dobbs ruling and the red state statutory reaction. Children born to other children, where responsibility is an unreasonable expectation. How many of those unwanted or unexpected children, born into an environment devoid of protection or opportunity, will join statistical categories of failure? Welfare recipients? Criminals? Mired in a life below the poverty line? An unending generational pattern with more unexpected babies?

Indeed, even healthcare in most red states, where the option of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act was specifically rejected, has in fact contracted. A salient reality for those facing unwanted pregnancies with few if any financial resources to pay for the associated medical costs… and most certainly, the cost of raising that child after that birth. Putting a child up for adoption is an emotional hammer that many young women simply find untenable.

As red state governors explain that they are searching for new sources to provide that financial, medical and social support for parents and their unexpected babies (as they grow to adulthood), that funding is elusive or simply verbiage without substance. The token statements from religious fundamentalists that they will provide private, charitable support, contains few tangible commitments, all vastly too little, too late. Often, what charitable support does exist comes with untenable strings and required commitments from religious zealots.

Even Republicans in Congress, pretending to provide new support for parents dealing with their unexpected birth, are offering bills with “good optics, but without substance” legislation that does not remotely deal with that litany of the costs noted above. Lots of rhetoric, very few solutions, as Los Angeles Times OpEd writer, Michael Hiltzik (July 11th), notes: “After the Dobbs ruling was leaked in May, a fellow at the Koch-funded Ethics and Public Policy Center asserted that allowing states to outlaw abortion ‘compels a greater claim on public resources to support expectant mothers facing crisis pregnancies and to seek to make all parents’ lives a little easier.’

“Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, whose state produced the abortion ban that the Supreme Court endorsed in Dobbs, said on CNN after the ruling that ‘the next phase of the pro-life movement is focusing on helping those moms that maybe have an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy.’… Reeves did acknowledge, however, that ‘it’s not something that we have spent a lot of time focused on.’.. No kidding. Red states, the epicenters of antiabortion lawmaking, could have implemented pro-family policies whenever they pleased. For the most part, they have done just the opposite.

“For a good illustration, just compare the maps showing the states with the most stringent abortion laws with those that have failed to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, a key initiative to help low-income families… Of the 12 red states that haven’t expanded Medicaid, 10 are listed by the Center for Reproductive Rights as those in which abortion is now illegal or that are “hostile” to abortion rights. The exceptions are Kansas, where abortion rights are protected by the state Constitution, and Florida, where abortion is legal if it’s performed during the first 15 weeks of pregnancy… Mississippi, a non-expansion state, has the worst infant mortality rate in the country, at twice the U.S. average. Reeves was downplaying his state’s record when he said it had not ‘spent a lot of time’ on helping mothers and families. It hasn’t spent any time on the issue.

“The best illustration of GOP fakery on the pro-family front, however, comes from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who unveiled the ‘Providing for Life Act,’ which he called a ‘pro-family framework,’ on June 24, the very day that Dobbs was handed down… The centerpiece of this proposal is the so-called New Parents Act, which would allow some new parents to take up to three months of paid family leave for each new child, but require them to repay the benefit by giving up some of their Social Security benefits when they retire… This is just a reintroduction of a measure that Rubio and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), proposed last year, which itself was a rehash of a measure Rubio proposed back in 2018, which itself was an alternate version of a plan proposed by Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

“We’ve been following these proposals in all their permutations from the start. They all share the same flaw, which is that they are all disasters dressed up as benefits. Rubio’s plan, which is the most detailed, is also the worst, cementing his stature as a policy vacuum swathed in gabardine… None of the promoters has ever explained why family leave should be tied to Social Security, which is chiefly a retirement program, in the first place.”

If every life is so precious to these radical red states cow-towing to even more radical religious zealots, why are they so loathe to assume the necessary resulting financial responsibility? Although this religious faction is a minority, given the vagaries of US politics, they are now our ultimate shot-callers. All this with the complicity of a Supreme Court that has elevated extreme Christian religious beliefs, NRA doctrines and a distorted view of states’ rights above the equal protection provisions of the United States Constitution.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you think the damage to our overly polarized nation from this imposition of a radical minority beliefs on the majority of the country is terrible so far, it will get a whole lot worse in the immediate future.