Comprehensive Impacts of Trump’s Second Year: Women & Families
This publication is meant to be a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the Trump administration. There are many things that happened during the campaign that are not included. For this series covering the second year, impacts from about January 20, 2018, to January 31, 2019, are included. An introduction to this year’s series is here.
There are sure to be things missing, but I have done my best to record these impacts. The impacts are compiled under 20 different categories, or articles:
1. Cabinet and Other Appointments;
3. Women & Families;
4. LBGT;
5. Judicial/Constitutional;
6. Ethics;
7. Targeting free press/free speech/Privacy;
8. Health & Safety;
9. Consumer Protections;
10. Education;
11. Transportation/Infrastructure/Housing;
12. Immigration;
13. Social Contract;
14. Business/Economy;
15. Budget;
16. General Governance;
17. Character;
18. Military/Defense/Police;
19. World; and
20. Some good news. Because there is always some good news.
Since this series takes a long time to write, I will publish each section as I complete it. This article is on Women and Families. You can read the complete series on the first year of the administration here.
Women & Families
The Trump administration is clearly strengthening the existing war on women. His director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently introduced bills to grant men “property rights” over fetuses, which would require a man’s permission for a woman to have an abortion. His vice-president even stated that Trump is making “great progress” to limit women’s access to legal abortions in the U.S. and abroad and asked anti-choice zealots to work “even harder to help restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law.” He anticipated that “legal abortion could once again be banned in the U.S., and that it could happen in our time.” (The Guttmacher Institute has a thorough chart showing an overview of abortion laws.) Clearly, when the Trump regime says it wants to “make America great again,” it really means, “Make America 1950 again.” The president of Population Action International, Suzanne Ehlers, rightfully suggested that the Trump administration is erasing women and girls around the world with its horrific policies, stating, “The signal is clear: That women, girls, LGBTQI people, and other marginalized communities are not people.”
Not only is Trump trying to eliminate access to abortion in any case, he is also trying to reduce or eliminate access to contraception. Trump is doing everything it can to dismantle President Obama’s family planning policies, stacking the entire administration with anti-women conservatives and making subtle changes that “could end up having massive funding implications for health care organizations across the country,” according to reporter Emma O’Connor. And even before the election, the vice-president claimed that “condoms are too ‘modern,’ too ‘liberal,’ and offer a poor defense against sexually transmitted infections and diseases.” In fact, as governor, Pence allowed an HIV outbreak to spread, choosing to “pray over a clean needle exchange. Trump’s judicial appointees confirm that access to contraception is at serious risk.
Thanks to Trump’s policies, the United States was recently ranked by experts as the 10th most dangerous country in the world for women. The US was the only Western democracy to be on the list. The US has also been found to be the most dangerous place in the developed world for women to give birth, having the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. That rate, as well as other poor maternal health issues, has been directly connected to anti-women, anti-abortion policies.
Dangerous Anti-Science, Anti-Evidence-Based-Practices Acts
· HHS removed from its website womenshealth.gov the pages dedicated to breast cancer and material about insurance for low-income people.
· The State Department was ordered to strip language about women’s access to contraception, reproductive rights, and discrimination from its annual global human rights report, which has always discussed these issues in the past. Another section of the report discussing racial, ethnic, and sexual discrimination has also been ordered to be pared down.
· The acting deputy assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department, Valerie Huber, was selected as the final decision maker about which groups receive federal family planning funds. Huber is a long-time abstinence-only advocate. In the past, a group of officials made the decision. This includes the Title X program, which funds family planning services, mostly for low-income women.
· Unsurprisingly, the Department has removed science-based approaches and has begun pushing abstinence-only education in schools, and has threatened to deny Title X funds to organizations that do not include in their programs a “meaningful emphasis on “the benefits of avoiding sex when communicating with adolescents and to use programs that don’t normalize sexual risk behaviors.” The administration compared the “risk of teen sex to drug use or failing to use a seatbelt.”
· Trump is doing everything it can to dismantle President Obama’s family planning policies incrementally, cutting “cutting Obama-era grant specifications and replacing them with language that benefits faith-based organizations, abstinence-oriented programs, and natural family planning methods that don’t involve hormonal or chemical contraceptives.”
Continued War on Reproductive Rights and Abortion
· Like with most things, Trump blatantly lied about the statistics on Americans’ support for abortion in trying to rationalize his harmful actions. He claimed that abortion is “a 50/50 question in this country.” In fact, only about a quarter of people believe that Roe should be overturned, likely the same quarter who continue to comprise Trump’s ignorant base.
· Trump revived and expanded the Reagan-era gag rule, which prohibits funding to any organization that provides abortion, counsels women about abortion, or refers patients to places that provide abortions. Thus, funding for Planned Parenthood and other organizations are at continued threat.
· The new rules would also ban doctors from advising women considering abortion about where she could get one.
· Another rule requires insurers on the Affordable Care Act marketplace to charge women a separate monthly bill for abortion coverage, which would be so expensive that it would likely force insurers to stop offering abortion coverage at all.
· Rather than work to end the shutdown, Trump’s Senate prioritized a bill to codify the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortion care, especially for low-income women.
· With Trump appointing judges and justices, anti-abortion and anti-women zealots across the country see an opening to create a wave of anti-abortion laws (not to mention anti-LGBT laws, described in the next article) at the state level. Trump’s election has exacerbated draconian and dangerous state-level bills in anticipation of a right-wing Supreme Court that will overturn Roe and other privacy decisions:
– Iowa was among the first states to pass a bill banning abortions after any fetal heartbeat, which is around 6 weeks and often before women even know they’re pregnant (and, not for nothing, isn’t really a “heartbeat” at all but general electrical activity).
– Many states soon followed, including Mississippi, which banned abortions after an arbitrary 15 weeks, allowing for exceptions only for “medical emergency and in cases of severe fetal abnormality.” The bill also means that doctors who perform abortion could lose their state medical licenses and receive a civil penalty of up to $500.
– Ohio attempted to ban abortion completely in a direct effort to get the Supreme Court to hear the case in anticipation of overturning Roe.
– Also in Ohio, a bill was introduced to criminalize both those who get an abortion and those who perform them, even allowing the death penalty. The bill could also criminalize contraception. Empowered by the new Supreme Court, Ohio Republicans declared that motherhood is “necessary” and have moved to make motherhood mandatory. A bill also moved to reclassify fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses as “persons” in the criminal code.
– Kentucky voted to ban dilation and evacuation, the most common abortion procedure, after 11 weeks.
– In Indiana, the governor signed a bill requiring doctors who treat women for complications arising from abortions to report detailed patient information to the state.
– Also in Indiana, abortion providers are now forced to bury or cremate all fetal remains, which are now considered “human remains.” (Spoiler alert: Trump’s Supreme Court later upheld that law.) This is not only scientifically incorrect and misogynistic, but is also expected to raise the cost of abortion in that state.
– Similarly, in Texas, women who miscarry are now forced to consent to fetal burials.
– In Idaho, there was talk about imposing the death penalty on women who get abortions. Politicians and political candidates from Ohio to Oklahoma are pushing similar measures and promising to criminalize abortion, according to reporter Kimberlee Kruesi.
– As an early look of what the “religious freedom” bills will bring, a woman in Arizona was refused a prescription for her miscarriage by a pharmacist who said that it was against his ethical beliefs.
– A woman in Michigan was also refused a prescription for her miscarriage by a pharmacist who cited his personal religious views. The pharmacist also refused to transfer the prescription to anyone else.
– In South Carolina, the governor changed the rules about who can adopt now that President Obama’s rules on discrimination are no longer valid. He issued an executive order allowing foster care providers to discriminate based on religion without losing their license since some will only allow “Christians” to foster or adopt.
– Trump has allowed adoption agencies in South Carolina to turn away Jewish and same-sex parents.
· Other states are preparing for Roe being overturned. Alabamans overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure that recognizes the “the rights of unborn children” and clarifies that the state’s constitution “does not protect the right to an abortion or require funding of abortion.” And West Virginians also passed a measure removing any abortion protections from their state’s constitution.
· The reversal of Roe would mean not only access to abortion would be limited to those who live in the right zip code and those who have the money and resources to travel anywhere to get one, but could also limit access to contraception.
· If we thought we could count on the courts to protect us from these anti-women bills, we were wrong. Trump has already stacked the federal courts and the Supreme Court with judges and justices hand-picked by the Heritage Foundation. Thus, the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to an Arkansas abortion law that effectively bans abortions by pill instead of by surgical procedure.
· A federal court ruled that a group crowding women as they entered a health clinic that also provides abortions, ignoring requests to be left alone, trying to block the entrance with signs covered with pictures they thought were pictures of aborted fetuses, and making death threats to clinic escorts could not be considered harassment, and a buffer zone was not necessary.
· Since Roe was the basis for many subsequent rights based on privacy, such as the right to marry, to have children, and to protect oneself from having children, other cases affirming those rights could be at risk, such as Griswold v. Connecticut.
· Some conservative justices have already implied that privacy should not be protected. Justices Roberts, Thomas, and Alito have already indicated that the right to privacy is not a constitutional right that deserves protection, nor should any right to privacy override someone’s religious beliefs to deny that right.
· These dangerous policies affect not only women and families in the United States, but those around the world. At a UN meeting, members of Health and Human Services, US Agency for International Development , and the US Mission to the UN pushed for all references to contraception, abortion, and comprehensive sex education to be stripped from a report on international gender equality and referred to the US as a “pro-life nation.” The requests from the US were more conservative and draconian than any request from any participating country, including Russia and the Arab nations.
· Trump’s State Department also ordered American diplomats around the world to scale back US support for sexual and reproductive health programs and to push back on UN resolutions on women’s interests, especially related to sexual health and sexual harassment.
· Ironically, Trump’s policies and global gag rule have actually led to more, not fewer, abortions worldwide.
Attacks on Contraception
· The new, expanded global gag rule would also pave the way for many previously ineligible organizations that oppose contraception to receive federal funding.
· Already, women in the military are being denied access to contraception as doctors cite General Order 1, which is essentially a “ban on sex.” This is a clear violation of pentagon policies regarding privacy, which are being ignored.
· Speaking of new rules, Attorney General Sessions created a “Religious Liberty Task Force” that is meant to be a necessary step for a Christian nation to “face down the prevailing forces of secularism.” The Task Force is headed by people active in defending supporters of Prop 8, the California proposition that banned same-sex marriage. The expanding “religious liberty” allows anyone from doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare workers to bakery owners to decide who to treat, serve, sell to, as well as what to cover under insurance, based on their own moral beliefs.
· Regardless of religious beliefs, Trump rolled back President Obama’s rule requiring employer insurance to cover contraception at all, allowing employers to deny coverage based on any “non-religious moral convictions” that are “purely ethical or moral.” This roll-back is estimated to threaten contraception coverage for more than 55 million women, as well as transgender people.
Violence Against Women
· Republicans allowed the Violence Against Women Act to expire, deprioritizing it to shut down the government. VAWA funds various types of agencies, shelters, and legal assistance programs that help victims of sexual violence. The Act also funds some special victims units in prosecutors’ offices.
· Trump’s DOJ also made changes in the Office of Violence Against Women, rolling back President Obama’s expansive definition of domestic violence to a “more limited and less informed” definition. This new definition under Trump defines domestic violence as exclusively an criminal concern, which means that only actions that specifically constitute an arrestable crime can be called domestic violence, leaving out many victims’ experiences. Professor Natalie Nanasi provided a good example: “A woman whose partner isolates her from her family and friends, monitors her every move, belittles and berates her, or denies her access to money to support herself and her children is not a victim of domestic violence in the eyes of Trump’s Department of Justice.”
· Survivors of sex trafficking have also been targeted. Trump’s Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime eliminated funding for legal representation for victims and that supports survivors’ efforts to clear their criminal record that occurred as a victim.
· Speaking of sex crimes, with the Kavanaugh hearings, Trumpublicans have changed the defense of sexual assault allegations to “sexual assault isn’t that big a deal.”
· That was shown clearly when we learned that Congress members accused of sexual harassment have paid $15 million taxpayer dollars as hush money.
· And speaking of Kavanaugh, his accuser continued receiving threats and harassment long after the hearings were over.
· In the meantime, Trump had the gall to say that it’s a “very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of.” This coming from a man who has admitted to have gotten away with sexual harassment and assault for decades and who currently has at least 24 women accusing him of sexual misconduct.
· All of this has impacted everyday people’s lives. A man was arrested on a flight for groping a woman, justifying his actions by saying, “the President of the United States says it’s ok to grab women by their private parts.”
Immigrant Women and Families
· The atrocities happening at the border will be thoroughly covered in the article on Immigration. However, many of them impact women and families. As one example, hundreds of babies and children have been separated from their parents as they seek asylum and refuge in the United States, in many cases crying infants being forcibly taken from their mothers’ arms. If this isn’t reminiscent of past fascism, I don’t know what is.
· Both the abducted children and unaccompanied children crossing the border have been held in cages and concentration camps, and have suffered from “pervasive abuse and neglect” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
· As another example, a Yemeni mother of a terminal 2-year-old was denied entry to see her son in a US hospital before he died because of Trump’s Muslim ban. As civil rights attorney Saad Sweilem stated, “Not being able to be there in your child’s last moments is unfathomably cruel.”
· In his budget request, Trump included a clause that would give ICE the authority to deny access to abortion under any circumstances if the ICE agent has any philosophical opposition to the procedure. Since this includes denying access if they don’t want to provide transportation, this clause could prohibit a detained immigrant from accessing care at all that any ICE agent is philosophically opposed to.
· The director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Scott Lloyd, who had zero experience working with refugees and resettlement but tons of experience working on anti-abortion legislation, was writing an anti-abortion book while on the job. More disgusting, he received a weekly accounting of all the female refugees in his custody who were pregnant, including their location and number of weeks they were in their pregnancy. The purpose was to keep track of anyone seeking access to abortion so he could block that access.
· In addition, Lloyd personally traveled to at least one youth in his custody to intimidate and coerce her to not have an abortion that she wanted. He’s also personally denied abortions for pregnant teens who have been raped, which is a violation of national and international law.
· The Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling that allowed an immigrant teenager to have an abortion.
· Another pregnant immigrant teen who had been raped was taken to a “crisis pregnancy center,” a faith-based anti-abortion facility that tries to convince girls and women by any means to not have an abortion, and lectured with regular lies, such as women who have abortions regret them. The teen was also read bible verses to try to convince her to change her mind about abortion and given “appropriate” drawings to color. (For more information on the dangers of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, see the Guttmacher Institute’s in-depth report on the topic.)
· The attorney general stated that he wanted to rewrite the rules for political asylum cases to eliminate it for victims of domestic violence.
· Due to Trump’s immigration policies, fewer immigrant women are willing to report domestic violence and other abuse in the home.
The next article will cover this administration’s impacts on the LGBT community.
