Two years on, the consequences of the Texas abortion ban are almost too grim to contemplate: amidst a surge in infant mortality, babies are being found discarded in dumpsters, ditches, curbsides, and garbage trucks, the Washington Post reports.
This year, there have been at least 18 cases of abandoned infants in the state, according to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services figures cited by WaPo. That’s more than double the number documented ten years ago, the newspaper notes.
“There apparently has been… a little bit of an epidemic on this,” said a sheriff’s official for Houston’s surrounding county, where the body of an infant was found in a roadside ditch this summer, as quoted by WaPo. The morbid discovery was made by a landscaping crew.
The Texas ban, which went into effect in 2021, is considered the most draconian in the nation. It makes no exceptions even in cases of rape or incest, leaving women with no legal means of stopping unwanted pregnancies.
And according to independent research from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, the percentage of women without access to healthcare is the highest in the country, per WaPo. The already desperate circumstances are even worse for pregnant undocumented immigrants, who may avoid going to a clinic to seek care for fear of being deported.
“All of these intersectional things could be leading to this,” Blake Rocap, a lawyer with the Sissy Farenthold Reproductive Justice Defense Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told WaPo. The issue is exacerbated by the state’s “abysmal” access to prenatal care, he added, “particularly for people without private insurance, particularly for people without immigration status.”
In addition to the harrowing rise of infant abandonment, Texas currently has the eighth highest rate of teenage births, per US data, with over 20 cases per 1,000 teens aged between 15 and 19, compared to 13.6 nationwide. It also has the 13th worst maternal mortality in the country, with around 28 deaths for every 100,000 live births.
All the while, the state’s Republican leadership has slashed funding for women’s health and reproductive care.
But the problem isn’t only the abortion ban and the poor access to care, according to critics. It’s also the lack of education on the issue. State lawmakers have continued to cut funding for an awareness campaign that would inform mothers what to do when they decide they can’t keep their baby, the WaPo said, despite enjoying a budget surplus well over $30 billion.
Texas has “safe haven” laws that let mothers anonymously relinquish newborn babies at designated locations without risk of prosecution — measures that are often used to downplay the cruelty of the abortion ban. But little to no effort is being made to let women know that these alternatives exist, let alone fund them.
This is plain even to opponents of abortion.
“Women don’t know what to do,” Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a former congresswoman and director of The Woodlands township, told WaPo. “We have to educate, to give them more choices, to give them a chance to provide a loving home for their child.”
More on abortion: Hundreds More Babies Are Dying Since Banning Abortion