Physician performing a physical exam on a newborn baby after a Caesarean section.

When it comes to family values, the conservative state of Texas does not reign supreme. Back to back Republican governors, a general contempt for science and health care, and the predominately conservative state legislature already spelled more uninsured residents than any other state in the US. Now the Lone Star State has won another deadly title: Texas has the highest death rate among expectant mothers in the entire developed world:

The task force formed in 2013 to study and combat what state lawmakers already perceived as a rising maternal mortality rate. Then last summer, the University of Maryland study found that Texas had the highest maternal mortality rate in the U.S. The study also found that the U.S. rate was higher than all other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries reporting maternal mortality data, except for Mexico. That study offered no explanation for the reason.

Further research would help understand, "is it hemorrhaging, is it post-partum depression, is it aftercare?" said Kolkhorst. "Are there things we could do pre-birth that would help with post-birth?”

Yes, it’s all those things and so much more. It’s pretending abstinence-only education works better than birth control, it’s political grandstanding over a bathroom bill while pregnant women die from lack of care. It’s the maiming of Planned Parenthood, the scapegoating of single moms, the demonization of the poor and the working middle-class. It is the well-funded vilification of people like Wendy Davis or Cecile Richards, who dare try to intervene in the inevitable, morbid death spiral and save the lives of innocent men, women and children. It is the pride felt and expressed by so, so many conservatives who are perversely pleased, who literally relish, the prospect of cutting off millions of scared, suffering patients from the hope and relief provided by comprehensive health care.

It’s the elevation of dishonesty above decency, the baffling worship of ignorant halfwits and incompetent cranks whose only success was being born wealthy. It is the fealty to blatant affectation and murderous thugs, it is the praise of needless cruelty. Most of all it is the constant, shameless lying, the endless mendacity, and the obsession with profiteering flowing down from the most senior officeholders in the land that has taken over one of the two major parties in the United States today and is now busy running it, and the nation, straight into the ground.