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Trump Endorses Anti-Abortion Monitoring Of Pregnancy By States

Trump Endorses Anti-Abortion Monitoring Of Pregnancy By States

With little more than six months until Election Day, Donald Trump is preparing for an “authoritarian” presidency, and a massive, multi-million dollar operation called Project 2025, organized by The Heritage Foundation and headed by a former top Trump White House official, is proposing what it would like to be his agenda. In its 920-page policy manual the word “abortion” appears nearly 200 times.

Trump appears to hold a more narrow grasp of the issue of abortion, and is holding on to the framing he recently settled on, which he hoped would end debate on the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. One day before the Arizona Supreme Court ruled an 1864 law banning abortion was still legal and enforceable, Trump declared states have total control over abortion and can do whatever they like.

Despite the results of that framing, Trump is sticking with that policy.

In a set of interviews with TIME‘s Eric Cortellessa, published Tuesday, the four-times indicted ex-president said he would not stop states from monitoring all pregnancies within their borders and prosecuting anyone who violates any abortion ban, if he were to again become president. He also refused to weigh in on a nationwide abortion ban or on medication abortion.

Recently, Trump backed away from endorsing a nationwide abortion ban, but in the past he has said there should be “punishment” for women who have abortions. The group effectively creating what could become his polices, The Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025, fully support a ban on abortion.

The scope of the TIME interviews was extensive.

“What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world,” Cortellessa writes in his article.

“To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding.”

TIME’s Cortellessa also notes that Trump “is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

On abortion, Trump has repeatedly bragged he personally ended Roe v. Wade, which was a nearly 50-year old landmark Supreme Court ruling that found women have a constitutional right to abortion, and by extension, bodily autonomy.

But Trump has also “sought to defuse a potent campaign issue for the Democrats by saying he wouldn’t sign a federal ban. In our interview at Mar-a-Lago, he declines to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk. More than 20 states now have full or partial abortion bans, and Trump says those policies should be left to the states to do what they want, including monitoring women’s pregnancies. ‘I think they might do that,’ he says.”

“When I ask whether he would be comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit, he says, ‘It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.’ President Biden has said he would fight state anti-abortion measures in court and with regulation,” Cortellessa adds.

Trump in his TIME interview continued to hold on to the convenient claim as president he would have absolutely nothing to do with abortion.

But “Trump’s allies don’t plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power. The Heritage Foundation has called for enforcement of a 19th century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to ‘the moment of fertilization.’ I ask Trump if he would veto that bill if it came to his desk. ‘I don’t have to do anything about vetoes,’ Trump says, ‘because we now have it back in the states.'”

That’s inaccurate, if a national abortion ban, or any legislation on women’s reproductive rights, comes to his desk. And they will, if there’s a Republican majority in the House and Senate.

Brooke Goren, Deputy Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) writes, “In the same interview, Trump:

– Repeatedly refuses to say he wouldn’t sign a national ban
– Left the door open to signing legislation that could ban IVF
– Stood by his allies, who are making plans to unilaterally ban medication abortion nationwide if he’s elected.”

Cortellessa ends his piece with this thought: “Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. ‘I think a lot of people like it.'”

The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol, once a hard-core conservative Republican, now a Democrat as of 2020, served up this take on TIME’s Trump interview and overview of a second Trump reign.

“Some of us: A second term really would be far more dangerous than his first, it would be real authoritarianism–with more than a touch of fascism.

Trump apologists: No way, calm down.

Trump: Yup, authoritarianism all the way!”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Abortion Rights

Ohio Approves Abortion Rights Clause In State Constitution

Ohio decided to vote "yes" on Issue 1 Monday, enshrining abortion rights in the state's constitution, The Associated Press reports.

With approval of the amendment, The Washington Post reports, "Ohio would be the seventh state to protect abortion access since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal abortion standard in June 2022."

Per AP, "Opponents had argued that the amendment would threaten parental rights, allow unrestricted gender surgeries for minors and revive 'partial birth' abortions, which are federally banned," but "Public polling shows about two-thirds of Americans say abortion should generally be legal in the earliest stages of pregnancy, a sentiment that has been underscored in both Democratic and deeply Republican states since the justices overturned Roe in June 2022."

According to the report, "Issue 1 specifically declared an individual's right to 'make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions,' including birth control, fertility treatments, miscarriage and abortion."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

New York City Advertising Abortion Access On Billboards In Southern Cities

New York City Advertising Abortion Access On Billboards In Southern Cities

If you happened to be driving around the Atlanta, Georgia, area recently, you may have caught a glimpse of a huge, looming billboard stating, "Abortion. Safe + Legal for All in New York City." That billboard is just one of the 36 that began appearing in January in cities such as Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia, as well as in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, the Augusta Chronicle reports.

The signs are a campaign of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Abortion Access Hub, a confidential phone line connecting callers to abortion providers in the city's five boroughs. Its effort, which was rolled out in November, has allotted about $500,000 in total for the out-of-state signs in addition to online ads via Facebook, Google, and Snapchat, according to the Chronicle.

The health department paid outdoor advertising company Lamar $138,370 for the billboards and contracted OpAD Media Solutions in August for nearly $240,000 to provide what the city's OpenData website describes as "strategic media planning, buying, and placement" in digital, print, video, and social media and more.

In an email to the American Independent Foundation, a spokesperson from the health department said: "In New York City, access to abortion care is legal, protected, and a critical component of public health. … We want anyone who might be in need of reproductive healthcare to know that we're here to provide it."

Two pro-choice activists who spoke with the American Independent Foundation have mixed reactions about the billboards.

"It definitely does underline or underscore, again, the immense access problem that we have with abortion in this country that we've always had, but that clearly has been made exponentially worse by the Dobbs decision," Angela Vasquez-Giroux, vice president of communications and research at NARAL Pro-Choice America, said.

She added that this is an "all-hands-on-deck, new reality" and that the billboards "highlight a desperate need"; but, she said, "There's also a ton of people, the Atlanta mayor included, who are working really hard on the ground in Georgia to get pro-choice champions elected to do whatever they can to turn around those bad laws."

Roula AbiSamra, the state campaign director of Amplify Georgia, a nonprofit made up of seven reproductive health and justice organizations in the state, explained, "The same people most impacted by barriers to health care generally, and abortion access specifically, are the same people who can't easily hop on a flight to New York."

AbiSamra views the billboards as a "Band-Aid that we're putting on a huge problem, which is that people don't have access in their communities."

According to the Chronicle, the ads were placed by the health department specifically in Georgia, Florida, and Texas because abortion is severely restricted in those states.

In November, the Georgia Supreme Court reinstated the state's six-week abortion ban after a brief one-week block. Six weeks is a time before most people know they’re pregnant. Florida law bans abortion after 15 weeks' gestation, and patients are required to make at least two appointments — including one for in-person counseling — before terminating a pregnancy, the Guttmacher Institute reports.

Texas has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, with policies that include restrictions on medications necessary for an abortion, bans on the use of telehealth appointments in abortion care, and prohibitions against the use of Medicaid and private health insurance for abortion care except in extremely limited circumstances.

The budget of New York City includes $1 million for abortion care and “supports anyone who is unable to fully pay for an abortion and is living in or traveling to New York,” the New York City Council announced last September.

Amplify and its collaborators work to make sure that Georgia residents have access to funds to cover expenses associated with abortions, including travel, for those who need it. But AbiSamra says for many residents, traveling out of town for their reproductive health needs just isn't feasible.

"Who does medical tourism really work for? Even with abortion funds, the difficulties to leave your state and go somewhere else to get care are not solved simply by knowing that you can do it," she said.

To date, no state in the nation has passed a law outlawing people from traveling out of state for an abortion, but as Politico reported last year, Missouri lawmakers are trying.

Missouri Republican state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman added an amendment to a bill in March 2022 that was intended, Coleman said, to prevent a Planned Parenthood clinic in Illinois from offering abortion services to patients traveling from her home state.

The Washington Post reported that the measure would have allowed private citizens to sue anyone involved in a Missourian receiving abortion care, both inside the state and outside it, from the hotline staffer scheduling a visit to the clinic to doctors performing the procedure to anyone who transports abortion medication into the state.

To date, it remains legal for Missourians to leave the state for abortion services.

In an email to the American Independent Foundation, Drexel University law professor David Cohen referred to "The New Abortion Battleground," an article he co-authored, published in January by the Columbia Law Review, that discusses the legalities of patients traveling out of state to receive abortion services. Cohen and his co-authors write: "After Roe, state prosecutors and legislators will likely try to impose civil or criminal liability on their citizens who travel out of state to obtain an abortion, those who help them, and the providers who care for them. … Though targeting cross-border abortion provision has been almost nonexistent until this point, antiabortion states are likely to attempt it in the post-Roe future."

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

What Abortion Opponents Should Do Now -- If They Actually Want To Help Women

What Abortion Opponents Should Do Now -- If They Actually Want To Help Women

What is the pro-life movement? I've always imagined it to be broader than just efforts to make abortion illegal. In the wake of the 2022 elections, in which voters rejected candidates whose abortion postures were perceived as extreme, those who care about the welfare of unborn children might want to rethink their focus.

Arguably, the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision has been a legal tangle. A number of states had adopted so-called "trigger laws" during the regnancy of Roe v. Wade, specifying that if and when Roe was overturned, abortion would be restricted in a variety of ways. Idaho's law, for example, prohibited abortions except in cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother. Louisiana's law did not permit exceptions in cases of rape or incest, but only for the life of the mother or "serious permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ of the pregnant woman." Utah's law contains an exception for "severe fetal abnormality." In 11 states, bans have been blocked by courts. Litigation continues and is likely to persist for years as courts grapple with cases that reveal the limitations and ambiguities of the laws.

In Ohio, a ten year-old rape victim was forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion. Pro-lifers initially thought the story was invented, but it was true. Ohio's law, like Louisiana's, permitted abortion when a "medically diagnosed condition ... so complicates the pregnancy of the woman as to directly or indirectly cause the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function." It's common knowledge that pregnancy is dangerous for very young girls, but under Ohio's law, would being ten qualify as a "medically diagnosed condition"?

Voters have demonstrated a clear preference for laws that permit abortion in the early stages. Kansas led the way last August by rejecting a constitutional amendment that would have permitted the legislature to adopt strict limits. In the midterms, abortion restrictions were defeated across the board. It's safe to say that the legal strategy of outlawing abortion is facing a prolonged backlash at the hands of voters.

What can the pro-life movement realistically expect to achieve with the narrow focus on the law? Thirteen mostly low-density states have adopted abortion bans (for now). How many fewer abortions will there be in America as a result? The states with the highest numbers of abortions are mostly blue. The District of Columbia has the highest rate with 32.7 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age. New York is second, followed by New Jersey and Maryland. The bottom ten states for abortion are all red, and most are sparsely populated: Wyoming, South Dakota, Kentucky, Idaho, and more like that. And, as you can surmise from the geography, most abortions are sought by Black (38 percent) and Hispanic (21 percent) women. Whites account for 33 percent.

Today the majority of abortions in America are medication abortions. A number of states have moved to ban abortifacients, but considering our national success rate at restricting cocaine, fentanyl, and heroin, such laws are going to be leaky at best.

While the rate of abortion has decreased dramatically since 1990, the percentage of poor or low-income women getting abortions has increased sharply. According to the Alan B. Guttmacher Institute, 75 percent of women terminating pregnancies in 2014 were either poor or low-income.

Their reasons for seeking abortions vary, but women often cite economic hardship among the chief motivators. So the pro-life movement is, in essence, adding a nuisance factor for poor and minority women in red and purple states.

The accusation against the pro-life movement that I've always thought was unjust was that they cared little for actual mothers and babies and simply wanted to control women, or worse, to harm women. The blinkered legal strategy tends to give that accusation a whiff of plausibility. Why not concentrate on concrete reforms that can make a difference in women's lives?

We need a huge push to get contraceptives into the hands of all women who want them. Half of women with unintended pregnancies had not used birth control in the month they conceived. Many cite cost as a factor. A doctor's appointment should not be necessary to obtain oral contraceptives. All of the major medical groups agree. So, let's kickstart a campaign to permit the over-the-counter sale of birth control pills.

Every abortion is a tragedy. And while it's unrealistic to use the law to forbid women to abort if that's what they are determined to do, there are thousands of expectant mothers who wish there were an alternative. They need financial and moral support and we should provide it. Wouldn't it be better to devote time and money to support groups for struggling moms than to limiting the exceptions to pregnancy termination in Louisiana? Every child should be welcomed in love. The pro-life movement should concentrate on helping more women to avoid unintended pregnancies, and ensuring that expectant mothers who really just need financial or practical or emotional support can find it.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the Beg to Differ podcast.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.