Because women don’t need to think about it, now that he’s going to be their protector. I’m astonishingly unconvinced. Indeed, I highly recommend thinking about abortion a lot as a reason to keep Trump and Vance out of office next month.
“10 year-olds mandated to give birth. Miscarriage patients being arrested. Women forced to carry doomed pregnancies to term, turned into ‘walking coffins’. Why do they hate us so fucking much?” Jessica Valenti asks. ” They expect doctors to watch patients deteriorate into sepsis, and pregnant cancer patients to forgo radiation. They’re passing laws that have women losing fallopian tubes and uteruses, while directing OBGYNs to give patients with life-threatening pregnancies c-sections rather than a ten minute abortion. There’s no talking point that can explain away that cruelty, no political stance to make sense of the horror. They want us to suffer, and they don’t care if we die.” So get mad. Stay mad.
Do not buy their argument that drafting men for war is no different than denying women abortion. I’m not a fan of the draft and if we ever had one again it should apply regardless of gender—but as of today, it’s been 50 years since anyone’s been drafted (though forcing soldiers to stay in the military via “stop loss” in the Iraq war was also bad). Women are dying and suffering physical injury right now. And “men get drafted so women shouldn’t get abortions” is not a good argument. See also this old post of mine.
Nor is there any grounds for Ron DeStalinist in Florida demanding TV stations not run ads supporting an abortion rights amendment. He’s doing it anyway because stories of what women are suffering are effective and he wants them to stop. Why care about free speech when Ron has a political career to boost?
When JD Vance or anyone talks about a “minimum national standard” for abortion laws, don’t be fooled. What he means is a national ban—maybe not a total 100 percent ban but a universal 12-week or 6-week minimum with states free to go more draconian if they choose. They were always lying about leaving it up to states to decide. Vance also has no qualms about the federal government stopping women traveling for abortions. Just as Trump not only had no qualms putting anti-abortion justice Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, he worked to cover up Kavanaugh’s alleged history of assault: “It would have been grisly enough if Trump had merely continued to support Kavanaugh in spite of the allegations. But that is not what he did. He actively helped to suppress the truth about him.”
Vance also says he supports defunding Planned Parenthood. Never mind that it provides women with lots of low-cost health and ob/gyn services, not just abortion: they hate the idea of birth control and planning parenthood just as much. And they’re happy to track women’s pregnancies and miscarriages to make sure they’re not getting away with something — not a new idea either.
All things considered, I salute New Jersey for proposing travel advisories for state residents alerting them to which states it’s not safe to be pregnant. But I want to make it safe in more places, for more women. Vote Republicans out in November or vote to keep them getting in. It’s literally life or death.
