Recently, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos used in in-vitro fertilization (IVF) have the same legal rights as living, breathing, flesh-and-blood children.
Concerned about the impact of the ruling, Alabama Republicans scrambled to pass a law giving legal immunity to IVF providers in the state.
The immediate problem was resolved, but the theocratic thinking behind the court decision is widely shared in conservative areas of the United States.
One in four states have fetal personhood laws. Oklahoma, Mississippi, South Carolina and Alabama incarcerate women who are found to have used illegal substances while pregnant.
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Roughly two-thirds of American women between the ages of 14 and 49 use birth control, but six Republican states — Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Wyoming — have laws that limit contraception.
The 15 states with the most restrictions on reproductive freedom all voted for Trump by double-digit margins in 2020, except for Texas, which has a ban on abortion after six weeks.
The rationalization for these laws is the belief that life begins at conception.
But federal-level Republican officials — most of whom are men — consistently prioritize forced births over opportunities for children outside the womb.
This is the case despite clear evidence that investment in children pays for itself.
This turn to cruelty began when Republican Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency in 1981. Armed with the simplistic slogans of a former ad man (“government is the problem, not the solution”), Reagan proposed steep cuts to social services in his first budget — in the midst of high unemployment and a grinding recession. He even precipitated a government shutdown in 1982 when Democrats wouldn’t go along with the cuts.
While sticking it to the poor, Reagan increased defense spending to unprecedented levels and brought the top tax rate down from 70 percent to 28 percent.
This template — fiscal austerity for the poor (poor children especially) alongside lavish, taxpayer-funded subsidies for defense contractors and the wealthy — has been standard Republican fare ever since.
Upon taking control of Congress in 1995, Republicans pushed big cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other programs designed to help the poor and vulnerable. When President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, refused to sign the budget, Republicans shut down the government.
Then-President George W. Bush in 2008. (Photo by Aude Guerrucci-Pool/Getty Images)
Republican President George W. Bush signed tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, which gave $570,000 windfalls to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, while the Republican house in 2003 voted for steep cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other programs that help disadvantaged children.
In his 2014 budget, 69 percent of Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s proposed budget cuts targeted low-income Americans. His 2018 budget — drawn up when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress — took the same tack.
Decades of Republican indifference shows. A 2021 UNICEF study, for example, placed the U.S. 40th in the world in childcare policies, based on measures of paid parental leave, quality, affordability and access.
So much for “America First.”
Prodded by Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. addressed this shortcoming with COVID-era funding, which lowered the child poverty by 40 percent — only to lose that progress when Senate Republicans (and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin) blocked increased childcare funding during the 2021-2022 American Families Plan negotiations. (This move also torpedoed universal preschool, paid leave for parents with infants, and funding for low-wage childcare workers.)
House Republicans recently signed on to a bipartisan bill that reduces the child tax credit, but it has far less effect than Pelosi’s measures. There’s also no guarantee it will overcome a potential Republican filibuster in the Senate.
Lack of childcare assistance is just one of many ways in which America fails its children.
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Child poverty rates in the U.S. are twice those of Canada, higher than every Western European country except Spain, and two-to-six times higher than Scandinavian countries.
According to the Children’s Defense Fund, one in six American children under five years old lives in poverty, the highest ratio of any age bracket in the United States. Poverty rates for Black, Hispanic and Native American children are far higher.
Of the 11 million American children living in poverty, 5 percent have no healthcare coverage, with Texas leading the way at 11 percent.
Nine million American children struggle with hunger. The key federal programs serving this population are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC) — frequent targets of congressional Republicans.
According to the World Bank, the U.S. was 43rd in infant mortality rates in 2021 and didn’t make the top 50 in under-five mortality rates.
America’s broadscale ratings are the shame of the developed world.
The UN development report from 2022, described as “a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development,” ranked the U.S. at No. 20, behind Canada, Singapore, the U.K/Ireland and most of Western Europe.
America finished 35th in a 2020 World Bank study of the Human Capital Index, described as the measure of “the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to acquire by age 18, given the risks of poor health and poor education that prevail in the country where she lives.”
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A 2020 UNICEF report card on well-being outcomes for children listed the U.S. as 32nd in mental health, 38th in physical health and 36th overall, placing us behind former Soviet satellite states such as Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Estonia and Romania.
With some of the worst results for children among advanced economies, one might think that America would consider investing in future generations.
If Democrats hold the Senate, the White House, and win the House back, President Joe Biden is highly likely to do just that with increases in Medicaid funding and eligibility, increases in prenatal care, early childhood education, WIC, SNAP and childcare subsidies for struggling families.
By contrast, child poverty appears nowhere in the “Agenda47” tab or the “Issues” tab on Donald Trump’s campaign website.
There is a page about fighting chronic childhood illnesses, but Trump has lately veered into the realm of vaccine skepticism.
Biden, meanwhile, has already funded children’s healthcare at high levels and nothing concrete is proposed other than a commission — which is a common D.C. tactic to pay lip service to an issue.
Given this absence, the GOP’s history, and the 2025 House Republican Study Committee budget, if Trump wins the presidency and Republicans take control of Congress, it’s likely that funding for most (or all) of these programs will be on the chopping block.
Multiple emails (soliciting information about any GOP proposals to address child poverty in 2025) to Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Cheung, Trump’s press office, the Republican Study Committee and the Republican Senate policy committee went unanswered.
This ghosting is representative of the GOP’s neglect of our most vulnerable citizens for the past four decades.
The 2024 presidential election will determine if America tries to fulfill its moral obligation to coming generations, or becomes a deadbeat dad rolling the dice with our future.
Dan Benbow has been an online political features writer since 2003. His work has appeared at Raw Story, the Miami Herald, the New York Daily News, Salon, Truthout and the Progressive. He is currently seeking representation for his first novel and can be reached at benbowauthor@gmail.comor followed @danbenbow on X.
