Laurens County Funds a Crisis Pregnancy Center
While women in the county have nowhere to deliver these babies the state mandates we have
Southern white masculinity is a fragile thing, if we take Laurens County Republican politicians as an example. We know Stewart Jones, our bro-tastic SC House Representative who co-sponsored a bill to subject women to the death penalty if they have abortions, is chomping at the bit to level his Freedom Caucus game up to the federal level, seeking to run for the U.S. House seat that Jeff Duncan will soon vacate (to spend more time with his lobbyist girlfriend?).
Jones’s seat has become the coveted prize of Luke Rankin, who heads up the Laurens County Republicans, and who serves on the Laurens County Council. (Rankin, who apparently is a talented singer and is thus maybe a tad insecure about proving his manly bona fides, spearheaded the effort last year to put up a billboard on Interstate 385 declaring that God interpreted gender just like American Republican men do, which is how we know they’re the chosen ones I guess. The billboard was a response to AFFA’s billboard declaring that God loves trans kids, which was just a really nice thing to see on my commute from campus).
Image from WYFF. These Laurens County Conservatives don’t understand the difference between biological sex and gender, bless their hearts! They definitely will be bummed to learn God created at least five biological sexes lol.
In any case, Rankin knows that to get his buds to support him, he has to demonstrate that he too wants to punish women who seek abortions. His recent campaign announcements describe his service on the advisory board for the Upstate Pregnancy Center. I knew Rankin has no medical training, so I figured out right away that this is not in fact a medical facility meant to meet the urgent need facing Laurens County residents, who live in a maternal healthcare desert. Oh no, they’re planning to build a crisis pregnancy center in the county, which I’m sure will target the students I teach at Presbyterian College.
If you’re not familiar with crisis pregnancy centers, these are facilities that offer pregnancy tests and ultrasounds to women with the sole purpose to dissuade them from seeking abortions. They’re funded and run by anti-abortion groups and local and state government (here’s a map, so you can avoid them). South Carolina just dedicated a permanent budget line to fund these centers, to the tune of more than two million dollars of taxpayer money a year. The Laurens County Council this week voted to approve the gift of land to build the center. Rankin, who serves on the council, abstained from the vote, but the rest of the council approved unanimously.
Flash those pearly white in Columbia if you get elected and get the county some healthcare, Luke!
Don’t be too confused—Rankin in fact is not an OBGYN but he does apparently come from an evangelical Protestant background, so he’s actually perfect for an advisory board that will probably do what all the other crisis pregnancy centers do nationally—try to dissuade women from seeking abortions. CPCs have also been known to provide women with medically false information, like that birth control and IUDs cause abortion (they do not) and thus that women should not use them. In North Carolina last year, State Senator Natasha Marcus called out the apparent graft and corruption of funding these centers, millions and millions going to centers that had no website, no physical facility, and no clear evidence they were helping any women at all. Nationally these centers are receiving more than $250 million dollars of taxpayer money. Imagine if we just gave that money directly to women!
Maybe Rankin and chair of the Upstate Pregnancy Center board, Brenda Stewart, have plans to make this a place that actually helps women in the county. Maybe they’ll be the radical exception to the rule and help women access STI testing to make sure they don’t pass on congenital syphilis to the developing fetus. Maybe they’ll give these women direct income assistance so they could actually afford to have these children. Maybe they’ll lobby for the state to expand Medicaid (we are one of 12 states that haven’t yet—how cruel to continue to punish our citizens by denying medical care and coverage).
Maybe they’ll even use their political clout to get something women actually need, which is to have a place to deliver these babies they’re so intent on women having. Last year I wrote about the closure of the only labor and delivery unit in the county, and it remains closed.
This Is What Happens When You Don't Listen to Women and Doctors
So for the first time in over 20 years, the South Carolina legislature is being called back by the Governor because they weren’t able to do important things like agree on a budget or figure out exactly how best to make maternal health outcomes worse for women in the state. Vowing they won’t quit until they ban abortion (there has been a back and forth a…
Multiple babies have now been born in the Laurens County Hospital ER, where the staff has been denied training on basic monitoring equipment like tocodynamometers that measure uterine contractions (they’re monitoring contractions by literally the laying on of hands, ffs is this the 19th century). They even locked the doors to the L&D unit so staff can’t access any of the equipment. Women in distress or in need of a c-section have to transfer to hospitals in Greenville or Greenwood, almost an hour away. With limited fetal monitoring capacity in the ER, I can’t imagine how stressed the staff feel, and it seems like a ticking bomb before we needlessly lose a mom or baby or both in delivery.
in has written extensively about the Republican plan to fund these crisis pregnancy centers to make it look like they care about women. In Laurens County we do not need the local and state government giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to centers that will give out free pregnancy tests and try to convince women to hand over babies to Christian adoption agencies. We desperately need healthcare for these women, and for these babies if they choose to have them. Right now in Laurens County, that healthcare remains extremely limited.(Malissa Burnette and her team are doing what they can to try to push the SC ban back from six weeks to nine… more on that in next week’s newsletter.)
The crisis pregnancy centers are so predatory. They really take people at one of their most vulnerable moments and exploit their fear and uncertainty. It's really awful that they're funding one of those instead of putting the money towards funding somewhere for people to safely deliver.
"Multiple babies have now been born in the Laurens County Hospital ER, where the staff has been denied training on basic monitoring equipment like tocodynamometers that measure uterine contractions (they’re monitoring contractions by literally the laying on of hands, ffs is this the 19th century). They even locked the doors to the L&D unit so staff can’t access any of the equipment." I guess I'm just a naïve Brit, but how is this even legal, and how is it happening in the US in 2024?