Donald Trump Wants to 'Protect' Women...Whether We Like it Or Not

10.31.24

Click to skip ahead: In Anti-Abortion Strategy, conservatives’ response to the death of Josseli Barnica. A Georgia woman’s miscarriage treatment is seriously delayed in Care Denied. In the States, news from Wisconsin, Texas and Louisiana. Ballot Measure Updates on fundraising, Missouri, Nebraska and more. In 2024 news, Trump wants to be our protector whether we like it or not. Finally, In the Nation has some quick hits and the recording of my first Substack livestream!

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Anti-Abortion Strategy

I’m still reeling from ProPublica’s investigation into Josseli Barnica’s death, the young Texas mother who died of a preventable infection because the law prevented doctors from treating her miscarriage.

As expected, anti-abortion groups have responded to Barnica’s death by blaming “media and abortion advocates” for creating “confusion” about the laws. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA-PLA) and the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) said in a statement yesterday, “Lies to women about their pregnancy care are at the root of this tragic case.” Their claim is that pro-choicers are scaring doctors out of providing care, and women out of seeking it.

I started warning about this strategy two full years ago, and it’s rapidly gained steam as more stories of post-Roe deaths have become public. Remember, it wasn’t so long ago that SBA-PLA launched a half-million dollar ad campaign blaming pro-choicers for the deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller in Georgia. (The TV spot declared, “The Left’s scare tactics are deadly.”)

While it’s easy to dismiss these attacks as a transparent move to shirk responsibility—which it is!—it’s important that we don’t just shrug it all off. Conservatives are putting a lot of energy into this strategy, and it’s not just limited to noxious press releases from extremist organizations.

If you’ve been reading the newsletter closely over the last few weeks, you know that the Republican governors of Florida and Nebraska have both held press conferences recently with anti-abortion doctors, claiming that pro-choice “misinformation” is putting women’s health and lives at risk.

In fact, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office used this exact argument to justify threatening TV stations with criminal charges for airing Amendment 4 ads! Republicans claimed that these pro-choice ads—highlighting how Florida’s ban denies women needed care—were as reckless as falsely reporting a shutdown of the state’s 911 system.

In other words: this isn’t just going to be central to their messaging strategy—but to their political attacks, too. Imagine pro-choice ads, campaigns and websites being suppressed for revealing what bans do to women, all under the auspices of protecting women’s health. It’s not so far fetched; after all, this is the excuse Republicans used to force doctors to lie to women about the so-called dangers of abortion.

Related anti-abortion strategy news: I predicted yesterday that anti-abortion groups would respond to Barnica’s story by insisting that Texas law allows for life-saving “care,” or for doctors to “intervene.” But, I pointed out, they would never say that doctors were legally allowed to provide ‘abortions.’

And that’s precisely what happened a few hours later: SBA-PLA and CLI released a statement saying that Texas law allows “emergency care,” “treatment” and for doctors to “intervene.” They did not use the word ‘abortion.’ That’s because these groups insist that abortion is never necessary, even to save someone’s life.

Given that these are the activists drafting and lobbying for these laws, it seems to me it’s something we should be making voters more aware of.

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If you missed my column on the death of Josseli Barnica in Texas, please read it below:

How Many of Us Have to Die?

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Care Denied

USA Today published a nightmare story out of Georgia yesterday, where a miscarrying woman was denied timely care because of the state’s abortion ban.

Avery Davis Bell was early in her pregnancy when she was diagnosed with a subchorionic hemorrhage that caused bleeding and required frequent check ups and testing. By her second trimester, the bleeding became bad enough that Bell’s blood levels were going down and she needed to be put on bed rest. Eventually, Bell’s water broke prematurely—far too early for the fetus to survive.

Still, Georgia’s abortion ban prevented doctors from taking immediate action. "Your baby is dead or dying inside you, you're just waiting to crash,” Bell said. USA Today describes the 34 year-old mother lying in a hospital bed with blood hemorrhaging “in dinner plate-sized clots.”

The longer Bell went untreated, the greater her risk for infection—which can be deadly. (Remember, that’s how Josseli Barnica in Texas died.) And while doctors finally agreed that she legally qualified for an abortion, Bell wasn’t considered deathly-ill enough to forgo the state’s 24-hour waiting period:

“Bell said doctors grappled with when they could start the process of the procedure. It would take time for her cervix to dilate, but it was unclear to the medical team if beginning the dilation itself would be considered advancing an abortion before the necessary time was up.

‘All of this is stuff that I shouldn't have to think about and they shouldn't have had to think about. They should have said whatever is the safest thing, let's start it now. And they couldn't do that.’”

I don’t know how anyone can read something like this and not understand that pregnancy is too complicated to legislate. It also gets at something I wrote yesterday: conservatives want women’s suffering to become business as usual. They want us to accept the idea that it’s perfectly fine for women to lay in a hospital, in pain and bleeding, so long as she comes out alive on the other end.

I’m glad Bell is here, and that she got the care she needed eventually. But this was torture, plain and simple.

In the States

I know we’re all preoccupied with the election, but we should be keeping an eye on Wisconsin. On November 11th, the state Supreme Court will start to hear oral arguments in a case that will determine abortion access in the state.

In case you need a refresher: The suit going in front of the Court challenges the 1849 law that Wisconsin Republicans say bans abortion. Essentially, after Roe was overturned, this 1849 law—created before women had the right to vote—was treated as a total abortion ban, preventing doctors from providing care. But last summer, a judge ruled that the law isn’t actually an abortion ban at all—but “a feticide statute only.” (Meaning it only applies to an attack on a pregnant person that ends the pregnancy, not abortion.) That ruling opened the door for clinics to provide care again, even though anti-abortion groups claimed the law remained in effect as a total ban.

In the meantime, Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a suit arguing that the 1849 law is too old to enforce, and that it’s trumped by an 1985 law permitting abortions. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin also filed a suit, but it’s just Kaul’s that’s being heard in November as far as I can tell.

Here’s the good news: Thanks to voter ire over abortion bans, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is now under liberal control. The issue drove voters out to support newly-appointed Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who changed the makeup of the Court. That means abortion rights activists have a very good chance of winning.

In Louisiana, abortion rights activists and patients have filed a challenge against the new law that classifies abortion medication as a controlled substance. Thank goodness, because this law is incredibly dangerous. The medication is used in obstetric emergencies—like hemorrhaging. But because the drugs now have to be locked away, doctors have been running timed drills in hospitals to see how long it would take them to get from the locked-up pills to a bleeding patient.

The law has only been enacted a few weeks, and patients have already had a hard time accessing the pills, even when they need it for procedures like uterine polyp removal. From Michelle Erenberg, executive director Lift Louisiana, one of the plaintiffs:

“We will not sit back while anti-abortion lawmakers force people in our state to carry pregnancies against their will and then make those pregnancies more dangerous.”

Other plaintiffs include three Louisiana women—Nancy Davis, Kaitlyn Joshua, and Kaylee Self. Davis and Joshua were both denied vital abortion care and have been sharing their stories around the country. Self is a pregnant pharmacist, bringing the case forward on behalf of herself and potential patients.

The other thing to remember about the Louisiana law is that it allows the government to track who is dispensing and obtaining the pills in a state database. This is a big reason why they pass the law to begin with: As you know, data, abortion ‘reports’ and tracking have become a huge part of the anti-abortion movement’s post-Roe strategy.

You can read more about the lawsuit here.

The New Yorker covered the anti-abortion ordinance fight in Amarillo, Texas, where a group of local activists are working to stop extremists from passing a travel ban in their town. Several Texas counties have passed similar bans, which make it illegal to help a person leave the state for an abortion using county roads and highways. (The penalties are civil, not criminal.)

This is part of a broader trend of anti-abortion activists going to small towns across the country to lobby for what they’re calling ‘anti-trafficking’ ordinances. When one of the architects of this strategy was asked how he could call something ‘trafficking’ when you’re talking about adult women leaving the state of their own accord, he said: “The unborn child is always taken against their will.” 

And there it is: They want to call women who leave the states for abortion care ‘traffickers’ of their own pregnancy.

In addition to furthering restrictions on travel, these ordinances are there to create a chilling effect that prevents people from helping each other and—they hope—to get a lawsuit going on the Comstock Act that could make its way all the way to the Supreme Court. So, bad times all around.

For more on what’s happening in Amarillo, check out last months’ guest column from the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance:

How to Stop An ‘Abortion Trafficking’ Ordinance

Quick hits:

• Arizona Sen. Eva Burch in writes in MNSBC about why she’ll never stop sharing her abortion story;

• The Associated Press on how North Carolina voters are thinking about abortion and the presidential election;

• New Jersey lawmakers had a spirited debate about abortion rights;

• And the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle responded to the news of Josseli Barica’s death, blasting Texas abortion ban for “killing women.”

Ballot Measure Updates

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, whose nonprofit Think Big America, has already given millions to ballot measure efforts in Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and Montana, has just expanded the effort into four more states. NBC News reports that the group is now also supporting initiatives in Maryland, South Dakota, Nebraska and Missouri. An advisor to Pritzger says they’re “coming in as sort of a closer to help out with whatever they need.”

As I noted in today’s ballot measure explainer, if Amendment 3 wins in Missouri, it will mark the first time voters have overturned a total abortion ban since the end of Roe. The Washington Post reports that abortion rights activists in the state are feeling positive, and that polls have shown majority support for the measure. And Kansas City NPR reports that Missouri doctors have come out in force to campaign for Amendment 3.

“Blood, sweat and tears have gone into this, and it needs to pass for the sake of my community and the sake of my patients. The reality of the ban that we’re living under is so cruel and extreme.” - Florida Planned Parenthood physician Dr. Chelsea Daniels on Amendment 4

Meanwhile, NBC News reports on what’s been happening in Nebraska—where the governor is trying to get around a law that prevents him from using the power of the state to campaign for or against a ballot measure. As I’ve told you previously, Gov. Jim Pillen is doing a press tour with anti-abortion activists to decry pro-choice ‘misinformation’. He’s very clearly talking about ads for the abortion rights measure heading to voters next week, but won’t say that outright in order to steer clear of breaking the campaign law. Really sneaky.

Quick hits: NPR points out that where abortion is on the ballot, so is the economy; Mother Jones details how much money the Catholic Church has spent trying to defeat pro-choice measures; and the Associated Press looks at the Republican attempts to attack abortion rights ballot measures with anti-trans talking and ‘parental rights’ points.

2024

Donald Trump sure knows how to talk to women! The disgraced former president made another appeal to women voters this week, saying that he would “protect” us “whether the women like it or not.” Which sounds…right on brand, really.

As you can imagine, Kamala Harris’ campaign pounced on the comments (as they should.) Harris tweeted, “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not."

There’s at least one American woman who doesn’t mind Trump’s kind of ‘protection’: Remember Sarah Palin? The former vice-presidential candidate says that she 100% agrees with Trump stance, claiming—with typical Palin clarity—that he isn’t “forcing anyone’s opportunity to end a pregnancy.”

We all know what the truth is, though, about Trump’s abortion stance. That’s why he’s playing language games with the word ‘ban’.

In the Nation

• The American Homefront Project reports that private clinics in pro-choice states are seeing an influx of military abortion patients who are unable to get care through their government health plan;

• The New York Times highlights how different the reality of abortion later in pregnancy is from Republicans’ rhetoric;

• Rebecca Traister, who you should always read, wrote at New York Magazine that Michelle Obama’s speech “distilled what this election is really about;”

• Finally, if you want to hear more from me today, check out my interview with Kylie Cheung at Jezebel about my new book; watch my appearance last night on MSNBC with Alex Wagner, Joy Reid, and Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson; and if you missed AED’s video livestream on Tuesday, you can watch the whole thing below. (But also consider upgrading if you haven’t already so you can join live next time!)