95
votes
She wasn't able to get an abortion. Now she's a mom. At 13 years old, soon she'll start 7th grade.
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- Title
- She Just Had a Baby. Soon, She'll Start 7th Grade.
- Published
- Aug 14 2023
- Word count
- 3573 words
This is the very important thing to understsnd about any restriction on the right to abortion. Exceptions are bullshit that gives a veneer of reasonableness to a measure that is meant to create fear and uncertainty in the healthcare system to outlaw in practice even the things that are supposedly allowed by statute.
Even pregnant women who want their babies can't always get the care they need. People who aren't pregnant can't get some medications because they can be an abortifacient.
Jessica Valenti over at Abortion Every Day has said it more eloquently and clearly and compiled so many examples that if you really want to know, you should go read her work, and if you really care bout this issue, you may consider supporting her (I do).
Also, in that case we can point to the fact the cops said they could not find proof she was raped... well she's under the age of consent and is pregnant... do they think she is another virgin Mary?
That's BS in this case that they need proof she was raped (or even a police report). The fact that she is pregnant is all the proof they need for a 13 year old kid.
The police are just as malicious and complicit in her rape.
I agree with the overall thrust of your post, but I'm just curious about the legal ramifications if the father is also under the age of consent. If two 13 year olds have sex with each other, and neither is able to consent, does that mean that they were both raped?
Many but not all jurisdictions handle this with laws commonly known as Romeo and Juliet laws that remove criminal liability from young people exploring their sexuality with each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape#Romeo_and_Juliet_laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_reform
"So Ashley did what girls with no other options do: she did nothing."
I read what I could of the article, but that sentence is a disgusting way to describe a 13 year old girl after describing her mother unable or unwilling to go through financial hardship. It is not that girl's decision or inaction. The fact that she was guilted with the reality that she was not aborted herself is chilling. I wouldn't give a child a pet that lives for 10 years, never mind saddling her with a conscious being that lives for many times longer. It's a great article outlining a very serious problem in the states, awful everything.
I think that was teh point... the girl could do nothing. I don't think they were trying to pin it on the girl rather than paint a bleak picture of a girl who had no options.
That was absolutely the point. No one is insinuating at any point that Ashley is responsible for the decision. It didn't even come across that way, even a little, to me as I read the article.
In addition:
Ashley, the 13 year-old, wasn't being shamed. That story was about the great-grandmother shaming Regina (Ashley's mother) in the past.
Fuck Mississippi. The state and those government officials involved should be ashamed. They aren’t, but they should be. They’ve ruined countless lives.
Gotta love the Republican Party. Pushing good old evangelical pro life values upon us until the child leaves the uterus, after which they'll leave the baby and their family to fend for themselves with crippling medical debt and no support from the state.
To do this to a rape victim that's starting their senior year of middle school too...
It's even worse than that. 7th grade is either the first or second of three years of middle school, depending on the district. Mostly the second, but there's some places that still have k-6 as elementary school and 7-9 as junior high, instead of k-5 as elementary and 6-8 as middle (with the names usually being the tell, but it's not guaranteed).
Regardless, she's got at least one and probably two more years before she's even old enough to start high school, and she's already being forced to raise an infant. This isn't a teen mom in the usual sense, this is a child.
archive link
That's absolutely wild.
@split-evil-olive-tips has written up a great explanation, but words fail to describe the region that Clarksdale is in.
It's in the Delta.
Those from Mississippi know how much of a "trap" the Delta is, but to outsiders the level of poverty is on a whole 'nother level. Ashley's story isn't a rarity, but a normality of the limited resources of that region. The failure of the state of Mississippi addressing the pervasive poverty and lack of resources to mitigate its repercussions no doubt led to this unfortunate event transpiring and will make Ashley's life much harder in the future.
The Delta is a food desert that has been well researched and written about. These people are surrounded by hundreds of acres of food owned by wealthy landowners and large ag-business conglomerates, and yet they are forced to endure living off of what is available at the local Dollar General. Fresh produce and meat are a luxury in that area, and the ability to drive out further to attain those items is a privilege in itself compared to most. Every student and coworker I met that has "escaped" the Delta are treated as miracles who broke the system because of how more often then not, those escapes don't happen. Ashley and her mother did nothing because there literally was no other option available. Such is life in the Delta to the outsiders who decry its destitution.
William Faulkner once stated "To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi." But Mississippi natives will add in "To understand Mississippi, you must first understand the Delta." To be the state that undid decades of standing through Roe v. Wade, they also house a region that is more heavily impacted by their so called morality in their legal standing. A majority of children there are never given the chance; they just contributed more to the problem by removing an already hard to attain option.
Edit: grammer
I dunno, that seems to me like the least surprising part of the story?
median household income in Clarksdale, Mississippi is $30,000, with 40% of people living below the poverty line.
it's a 9-hour drive, which most likely means 3 days off work (day to drive there, day to get the abortion, day to drive back). labor laws in Mississippi don't require sick leave or have any other applicable protections - she can be fired for missing work, entirely at the discretion of her employer.
plus 2 nights in a hotel (Chicago isn't a particularly cheap city, and she's travelling with her 13 year old daughter who is already a rape survivor so she's probably not gonna want to stay in a cheap seedy motel)
plus the cost of the road trip (1200 miles round-trip, times the current IRS mileage reimbursement rate, give a ballpark estimate of $780). the IRS rate includes not just gas but various other expenses, which brings up another factor - it's totally possible the mother's car is good enough for driving around Clarksdale (population 14,000) but not in good enough shape for a total of 18 hours of highway driving. it could break down along the way, further increasing the cost of the trip (and if it happens on the way there, possibly causing them to miss the appointment)
and then the cost of the abortion itself - between $400 and $850, according to this.
Oh I totally get that they may not have the funds right now for an abortion, but how much will it cost to give birth to that child? To feed it, clothe it, raise it?
Saying "I don't have the funds for all this" may be correct, but that's going to be even worse in 9 months. How are the going to manage this?
yep, another example of boots theory
it's very expensive to be poor. and the insight that "wow, this is going to be more expensive long-term" doesn't cause money to magically appear in the short-term.
if money had been no object, they could have taken an Uber to Memphis (the closest major airport, an hour and a half drive away) then a 2-hour flight to Chicago.
or if money had really been no object, there's a general aviation airport 15 minutes north of town. they could have chartered a private plane to fly directly to Chicago.
this inequality in abortion access between the rich and the poor is nothing new:
Abortion Out of Reach: The Exacerbation of Wealth Disparities After Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization
Wealth Inequity Puts Abortion Out of Reach for Many Americans Living with Low Incomes
Wealth will now largely determine which Texans can access abortion
The wealthy will always have abortion access. I did 62 years ago
Rich women will always have the right to abort
Abortion access is more difficult for women in poverty
they're going to barely scrape by, existing in abject poverty in what is overall the richest country in the world. they're not the first, and they won't be the last.
like I said, 40% of that town lives below the federal poverty line (which is already a poor measure of actual poverty). and @KneeFingers's comment goes into more detail about what specifically that means in the Mississippi Delta region.
also, it's not at all guaranteed they will manage it.
Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate in the country
and the sixth-worst in the US for maternal mortality. and getting worse.
those are statistics, but there's a mother, a baby, and a family behind each one of those deaths. an in-depth article like this could easily be written about each one.
and once they get past the window of infant or maternal mortality (generally defined as death during pregnancy, or in the first year after giving birth), poverty in general is the 4th leading cause of death in the US.
While true, it doesn't make the funds appear. You can't fill up your gas tank by explaining how expensive diapers are to the pump.
As for how they'll manage it, it's very possible that they won't. If they do, they almost definitely won't be thriving. All three of them will be caught in a cycle of poverty and unlivable wages that are a feature, not a bug, for the people passing these laws.
Adoption
Still cost a bunch of money and takes a toll on your body
Especially for a tween/ young teen girl who has almost certainly not reached her full adult size yet. It is very dangerous to give birth too young, even more than the already considerable risks of carrying a child and giving birth for an adult woman.
It doesn't appear that she's gone that route, as it discusses the presence of the baby in the article. Even if she does choose to put the child up for adoption, they're still responsible for those medical bills. The child will also be a non-white non-newborn, putting them at a statistical disadvantage when it comes to adoption. They're more likely to end up stuck in an underfunded foster system
I'm very curious how they heard that Chicago was the closest. There are clinics across the state, including as far south as Carbondale, only 4.5 hours from Clarksdale.
from their doctor:
in the case of the Carbondale clinic, they opened in October 2022, and the conversation referenced in the article took place in January 2023.
so it's possible she wasn't completely up-to-date on recent clinic openings. or, I think probably more likely, she knew through the grapevine that the Carbondale clinic was booked solid (the article linked above has a map showing its location as essentially an abortion "oasis" for a bunch of neighboring states) and that Chicago was the closest location with clinics that had actual availability.
this is a pattern that plays out in other states as well. here in Seattle, for example, we're getting an influx of patients from Idaho. there are clinics in eastern WA that are closer, but that are completely booked:
that article was written in July 2022, before Idaho's very restrictive abortion ban went into effect. it's only gotten worse since then. (here's where I will plug the Northwest Abortion Access Fund)
and as that article notes, medication abortion is only FDA-approved for the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. the girl from Mississippi was estimated to be at 10 or 11 weeks during that first appointment. so she would have needed a surgical abortion, and that's probably what would have required the trip to Chicago.
I remember debating abortion rights at university. The opponents always conceded all of the 'reasonable' exceptions like rape or incest. But prosecutors don't play in this country and are often motivated by political ambitions to score points with the extreme right wing electorate so they can run for office.
The "reasonable exceptions" are only there to placate moderates who can be fooled into thinking that people who should qualify for those reasonable exceptions could possibly get the care they need. That rhetoric needs to be shut down as soon as you hear it. Abortions should be available without hinderance up until 24 weeks without exception, and they should be an option past 24 weeks when the mother's life is in danger. If even one rape victim is denied the abortion that she needs because someone decided she didn't fit those reasonable exceptions, the whole system needs to be torn down and rebuilt.
We agree. But I was surprised and horrified to watch the actual disregard for medical risks to miscarrying pregnant women in the post Dobbs era. These politicians are indifferent to women's deaths, including being indifferent to children being orphaned, just so they can do their moral posturing to these fanatics.
Is this pertinent to the story?
Religious beliefs vs directly observing and having empathy for others in your community challenge 2023 America. Choose the right thing to do, the compassionate thing to do. Why r u like this?
It doesn't even make sense as a religious belief. The only biblical mention of abortion is describing how to perform one.
If you believe, as the Bible states, that God knew you when you were in your mothers womb and that He knew your life before you were born, then your compassionate belief is not to kill an innocent.
And this is why it's so difficult to have a legitimate discussion or debate with these fundamentalists. They literally believe that they are in a holy war fighting for the lives and souls of unborn children, that God has everything figured out and shame on us for even questioning.
Luckily the GOP has expanded Medicaid access and other forms of healthcare in my state, oh wait no they actually deny anything that could possibly help these people, because "welfare bad."
The thing that really bothers me about this argument - that abortion interferes with God's plans - is that it supposes that God can predict and/or control human nature, yet is somehow completely powerless when it comes to abortion. And then there are those who say that they are doing it for the souls of the unborn, but if you believe that unborn children get sent to heaven, isn't abortion (or miscarriage) actually the best possible outcome for those children since they get to skip a lifetime of human torment?
Don't some Christian denominations (Catholic?) believe we are all born sinners and need to seek salvation/baptism? Does that count for the unborn or do they need to be born and then they're magically tainted? If it counts for the unborn, it could explain some people wanting to save them from going straight to hell instead of skipping to heaven.
And under Jewish beliefs, abortions are permitted to save the life of the mother and that life begins at first breath.
So why should the law be written in reverence to Christian theology? What about religious freedom for other religions or is Christianity the only one to be respected? What about those who are non-religious? Should the mother be left to die or face financial hardship because you believe law should be written only in respect to your views?
Also in all this religious doctrine, why is there never any consideration for the mother's life? Does her life not matter?
And "saving the life of the mother" is interpreted very liberally. It includes serious mental illnesses, needing tetrogenic drug treatment (like chemotherapy), and many other risks after consultation with the community Rabbi.
Actually, in any situation where the fetus is seriously endangering the mother's life, she's not just allowed, but actually required to end the pregnancy. She comes first in all cases.
This is what pushed me out of Christianity to begin with, the fatalistic idea that God decided who I am and what I would do with my life before I was ever born. It kinda flies in the face of the whole "free will" thing that we're supposed to have. So is there evil because humans have free will, or does everything happen according to God's plan? As for abortion, there's a simple explanation for why is should be legal: God made us perform them. How are we supposed to resist the will of God?
Ironically I am a naturalistic determinist now, but there's no hypocrisy in understanding that everything that happens in the universe is a result of the interactions of the fundamental forces, including the electrical impulses in my brain.
It's a special mix of racism and Mississippian religious morality. Clarksdale is in the Delta which coincidentally is contained within one congressional district from which the only black, democratic Senator hails from. After Jackson, that area is most looked down upon from a political perspective because it is majority black.
Source: Stereotypes of Black American Women Related to Sexuality and Motherhood
It does not surprise me that the same state that is dealing with the Goon Squad, also shows a lack of interest in investigating what happened to this girl because they probably believe she brought it onto herself. Instead the state's Attorney General is more interested in tracking if people are crossing the border for abortions.
According to the article there is an ongoing investigation and they did take DNA samples, although they took their sweet time doing it with the excuse that "there's a lot going on". It doesn't mention whether or not it's been run. Mississippi did recently pass a law requiring timely processing of rape kits, but like most states they have a massive backlog, and I doubt this counts as a rape kit for the purposes of that law.
Bruh if I get murdered, y'all have permission to put my case on hold until the child rape case is solved
I don't care how much else they got going on, this kind of case should be the number one priority. People should be rioting in the streets over this.