Donald Trump pretended to be a “moderate” on abortion during the presidential campaign. He denied he would back a national abortion ban and shamelessly lied about his relationship to Project 2025, which details multiple ways to restrict abortion access nationally. He falsely promised his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” even as he kept bragging — in one of his few honest moments — that his Supreme Court appointees were the ones who overturned Roe v. Wade. “I fully support the three exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother,” he insisted.
This week, he proved beyond all doubt that he was lying about the “exceptions,” at least when it comes to saving the lives of pregnant women.
On Wednesday, Trump’s Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss a case that began during President Joe Biden’s term, which would protect doctors and hospitals who perform emergency abortions. The case was against Idaho, whose draconian abortion ban effectively forces hospitals to airlift pregnant patients to neighboring states because doctors are under threat of arrest if they offer standard medical care. There is no “pro-life” justification for these draconian bans. Most of the pregnancies that need emergency termination are failing anyway, meaning there is no chance of producing a live baby. The only question is whether the woman should be left to die along with her fetus. The Biden administration sued Idaho, arguing that their ban on emergency care violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals to provide “stabilizing” care for people who present at an emergency room in a condition that could maim or kill them. The Supreme Court ruled once in favor of the Biden administration. Still, the lawsuits have continued, as states like Idaho and Texas insist that it’s a violation of “state’s rights” if they can’t force pregnant women to bleed out in hospital parking lots. Recognizing that the Trump administration was switching to the “let them die” side, an Idaho hospital sued the state, demanding the right to provide basic medical care to miscarrying women who show up at emergency rooms.
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Anti-abortion activists and legislators deny that abortion bans kill women, and have engaged in what looks very much like shameless cover-ups to hide the deaths that are already happening in states with these bans. After ProPublica published exhaustively documented reports showing that women started dying in Texas and Idaho within weeks of the abortion bans being passed, both states moved to censor the data used to make these determinations. Of course, if they don’t like all this bad press, there is an easy fix: Stop fighting the federal requirements to offer emergency care to pregnant patients, and let doctors do their jobs. Yet Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to keep these laws in place, showing they will spend a lot of time, money, and energy ensuring women die for no good reason.
The women most likely to be affected are those who are doing what Republicans say they “should” be doing: trying to have babies.
“The President of the United States has determined who deserves care and who does not, essentially ordering people to suffer, for families and communities to lose their parents, siblings, children, loved ones, and friends,” Dr. Jamila Perritt, an ob-gyn who heads Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement.
The only consistent “principle” held by Trump and his religious right backers is a belief that women are disposable. As I’ve written about before, the Christian nationalist view is that women exist “for” making babies and providing service to men. A woman whose pregnancy is failing is expected to welcome death as the ultimate expression of female self-sacrifice. Women who demand life-saving health care, especially after they “failed” at pregnancy, are seen as insubordinate. After two women in Georgia died due to the state’s abortion ban, anti-abortion activists took to X to blame the women for seeking abortions in the first place. They have also attacked Kate Cox, a Texas woman who traveled out of state for a medically necessary abortion, claiming she should have risked dying to have a baby that had no chance of survival.
Because Trump obviously doesn’t care about abortion as a moral matter and because of his long history of sexual immorality, a lot of voters got suckered into believing he really would be a moderating force on abortion. But his view that women are disposable made this move inevitable. Tellingly, the women most likely to be affected are those who are doing what Republicans say they “should” be doing: trying to have babies. While there are some cases of women needing aftercare from taking abortion pills, most women who show up at emergency rooms with failing pregnancies wanted to have that baby. It’s those childless cat ladies that Vice President JD Vance kept railing against who are at lower risk, because they aren’t trying to get pregnant in the first place.
Indeed, one of the most telling features of Trump’s second term is how much the focus is on tightening the grip on women who are already adhering to MAGA’s strict gender rules. As I wrote about last week, Republicans are increasingly looking to pass laws restricting the right to divorce and even contemplating a bill that would make it much harder for married women to register to vote. Despite all the vitriol aimed at single, childless, liberal women during the campaign, the Republican policy agenda is targeted more at stripping the rights away from women who live in red states, get married, and have kids. Trump’s EMTALA decision underscores how all women are viewed as disposable by Republicans, including and perhaps especially their own wives, mothers, and daughters.
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