How Trump is a Trainwreck for Women’s Rights and Why Biden is Better

The day after President Trump’s inauguration, millions of citizens marched across streets in America to protest Trump’s policies on women’s reproductive and civil rights, along with other issues such as immigration.

This march, came to be known as the Women’s March and the largest U.S. protest that occurred in a single day, took place on January 21, 2017. Many people were protesting against Trump’s misogynistic rhetoric, such as his comment about grabbing women “by the p*ssy,” and the perceived threat the administration posed to women’s rights.

So why were people worried about women’s rights under Trump? Because Trump’s comment about grabbing women “by the p*ssy” is just the very tip of the iceberg of the inappropriate, often demeaning comments he has made about and towards women, demonstrating the lack of respect he has for women in general. Not to mention the over 25 allegations of sexual misconduct made against Trump, which include accusations of rape.

He tweeted about Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, in 2012, “[She] is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man- he made a good decision.”

“That must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees,” he told a female contestant on his reality television show, The Apprentice in 2013.

“Sadly, she’s no longer a 10,” he said of model and America’s Got Talent judge Heidi Klum in 2015.

Also in 2015, he tweeted, alluding to Bill Clinton’s affair, “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?”

A more complete list of Trump’s derogatory comments about women can be found here.

Three years after the Women’s March, it has become apparent that the protestors’ fears about women’s rights under Trump were very much warranted. Since then, the Trump administration has passed numerous policies to rob women of their reproductive rights.

Mere days after his inauguration, Trump reinstated the Global Gag Rule, a policy that prevents foreign health organizations from receiving U.S. aid if they provide abortions or even information about abortions to women.

“The Global Gag Rule creates dangerous and unnecessary barriers to comprehensive care, and as a result, reinstating it would lead to higher rates of unsafe abortion, more unplanned pregnancies, and more maternal deaths globally,” Jamila Taylor, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, said in 2017 as quoted in a Center for American Progress press release.

In August of last year, a similar Trump administration domestic gag rule forced Planned Parenthood centers to withdraw from receiving federal funding from the Title X Family Planning Program, jeopardizing access to reproductive healthcare, including birth control, for the over 1.5 million patients Planned Parenthood serves.

And in January of this year, with his impeachment trial underway, Trump became the first sitting president to speak at the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally.

“Sadly, the far left is actively working to…silence Americans who believe in the sanctity of life,” Trump claimed to the crowd of anti-abortion supporters. “They are coming after me because I am fighting for you, and we are fighting for those who have no voice, and we will win.”

On the very same day of the rally, his administration threatened to withhold federal healthcare funding for California if the state continues to require insurers to cover abortion.

In addition to undermining reproductive healthcare access for women in America and around the world, Trump also attempted to revoke the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order passed by Obama in March 2017, an order that requires employers to submit salary data to the government and comply with civil rights laws. According to The Independent, a federal judge ruled against Trump’s attempt to revoke the order and the administration is waiting for an appeal to go through the judicial system.

Now, let’s look at what Biden has done for women’s rights.

In a Time opinion piece Biden wrote, he stated that the Violence Against Women Act he introduced in 1990 was his “proudest legislative accomplishment.”

The bill, which was introduced in 1994, “was a landmark piece of legislation that changed the way our country responded to domestic violence and sexual assault,” according to the Obama White House archives. From the year the bill was passed to 2008, the violent crime rate decreased by 63 percent, according to a study released by the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

This bill, which expired in February 2019 and has yet to be reauthorized by Congress, funded rape crisis centers, helped house victims of domestic abuse, and trained police officers and judges on dealing with cases of domestic violence. As the first federal legislation addressing domestic violence and sexual assault, it also brought awareness about domestic abuse as a serious crime and changed the way that American people viewed abuse in households across the country.

In September 2014, President Obama and Vice President Biden launched the “It’s On Us” initiative to end sexual violence on college campuses. Biden helped spread awareness for pervasive problem of sexual assault on campuses through making a Public Service Announcement with Lady Gaga encouraging views to stand up against rape and speaking at numerous universities for the “It’s on Us” campaign. By November 2015, over 300 colleges had held over 1,000 sexual assault awareness events, according to an op-ed written by Biden himself.

“We have more to do to change the culture that asks the wrong questions, like why were you there? What were you wearing? Were you drinking?” Biden wrote in the op-ed, which appeared in over ten college newspapers. “You know that survivors are not statistics… For all of them, everywhere, we can and we must end sexual and dating violence on campus.”

According to Biden’s website, if he is elected president, he plans to ensure the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, further work towards ending rape kit backlog, and help victims of domestic violence find housing and temporary cash assistance.

Clearly, there’s only one presidential candidate who will work towards preserving women’s reproductive and civil rights: Joe Biden.