Carol Davis
Because a second Trump administration will impose a federal ban on all abortions, regardless of circumstances
Jacqueline Rose, one of the foremost feminist, literary, and cultural critics of our time, wrote in her 2021 book On Violence and On Violence Against Women:
“It is a truism to say that everyone knows violence when they see it, but if one thing has become clear in the past decade, it is that the most prevalent, insidious forms of violence are those that cannot be seen. Consider, for example, a photograph from January 2017. A group of identical-looking white men in dark suits looked on as their president signed an executive order banning US state funding to groups anywhere in the world offering abortion or abortion counselling. The passing of the ‘global gag rule’ effectively launched the Trump presidency. The ruling meant an increase in deaths by illegal abortion for thousands of women throughout the developing world. Its effects have been as cruel as they are precise.”
Rose continues to enumerate other abortion bans that followed across the US in Republican-controlled states. One such bill introduced into the Ohio state legislature included language enforcing that, in cases of ectopic pregnancy, doctors must reimplant the embryo in the woman’s uterus, despite there being no such medical procedure available. Ectopic pregnancies can be fatal if not treated immediately. Rose quoted Kate Gilmore, the UN deputy high commissioner for human rights, as describing US policy on abortion as a form of “extremist hate that amounts to the torture of women.”
We’ve already seen what can happen under a Trump administration; his kangaroo court allowed the decimation of a fifty-year-old constitutional right to abortion access and gave states the right to impose cruel bans on abortion—of which twenty-eight states have imposed gestational limits as early as six weeks—before many women know they are pregnant. Should he prevail in this election, we should anticipate losing all protections because his administration will impose a federal ban on all abortions, regardless of circumstances.
This means that a ten-year-old girl, a victim of rape or incest, will be forced to carry a pregnancy to term, despite being a child herself. This means that your mothers, daughters, granddaughters, sisters, and aunts will be prosecuted and tried as murderers. They will go to jail, as will their doctors. Trump’s abortion platform invokes fetal personhood, which could make abortion, IVF procedures, and miscarriages prosecutable as murder. Some legislators have proposed the death penalty for these offenders. If you have the devastating misfortune of having a miscarriage, you may lose your life or be rendered infertile because a doctor will be forbidden from providing life-saving care. If you are carrying a fetus with a life-threatening anomaly, you will have no recourse but to suffer the emotional pain of continuing the pregnancy while knowing your baby will suffer and most likely die. It won’t stop there; if you consider helping someone access an abortion, you run the risk of being prosecuted.
We should be under no illusions. A Trump presidency will devastate women, girls, mothers, and families. In no uncertain terms, a Trump presidency will sanction violence against women.
Kamala Harris is an outspoken advocate for reproductive freedoms. She has visited abortion clinics, and, under her leadership, has: helped solidify telehealth access for abortion; pushed veterans’ affairs hospitals to provide abortion counseling and services; clarified HIPAA privacy rules to make sure health employees don’t give protected information to law enforcement; and made sure that abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, and other reproductive health care are entitled to accommodations under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
Harris has made it clear that her administration will work to counteract the effects of abortion bans and advocate for the restoration of Roe v. Wade protections, along with creating broader protections for abortions. She has worked to increase funding for women’s health services and been outspoken against restrictive state laws that threaten reproductive rights.
“We who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans—because we trust women to make decisions about their bodies,” she said at a Wisconsin rally.
Harris has already been a proactive supporter of women’s health care, with a focus on maternal health care—specifically Black maternal health. She will have a big impact on how the country addresses reproductive rights, which is what we must do now in order to save our mothers, our daughters, our aunts, and our friends. Our families.
I am voting for Harris.
Full stop.
Carol Davis works to make the world a better place for her six grandchildren and all their friends. She lives in New York City.