Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, Donald Trump said today that he wants a total ban on abortion and “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions. If Trump’s name-calling, victim-blaming, and slut-shaming rhetoric didn’t scare you before, this should. His comments today have real, devastating consequences for women.
Trump himself recognizes that making abortion illegal won’t stop women from seeking it out—instead they’ll just return to the back alleys for unsafe, life-threatening abortions. We should be horrified that Trump acknowledges this fact, yet simply laughs it off and says abortion should still be banned and these women punished.
Even anti-abortion groups like the March for Life and Susan B. Anthony List recognize that Trump has gone too far.
But let’s be honest—Trump isn’t alone and he didn’t come up with this dangerous rhetoric on his own. For years, Republicans across the country have punished women by stigmatizing, restricting, and eliminating women’s access to abortion and other basic health care services.
Even worse, states have sought to criminalize women for having a miscarriage or self-inducing abortion. Take Indiana, for example. Purvi Patel is serving 20 years in prison for feticide and child neglect after authorities accused her of using illegal abortion drugs. Patel has maintained that she had a miscarriage, and has filed an appeal. But Indiana isn’t alone—at least 38 states have these troubling feticide laws on the books, and 23 of them are laws that apply to early stages of pregnancy.
Is Trump going to demand an investigation for every miscarriage?
If you think this isn’t possible, in 2014 we defeated Amendment 67 in Colorado, which would’ve allowed just that—criminal investigations into miscarriages.
If Trump is elected president, are all pregnant women’s bodies to become potential crime scenes?
It’s 2016. We’re tired of being on the defense. That’s why we need a strong, feminist woman in the White House who will fight to advance reproductive rights. Hillary Clinton will not only be our advocate—she will be our champion.