Are women’s futures looking grave under a Trump presidency?
On the 5 November, Donald Trump was announced as the 47th president of the United States. Not only has he won the Electoral College, but the popular vote, all seven swing states, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The strongest mandate from the American people that a future president could ask for.
A convicted felon, a man with twenty-six public accusations of sexual misconduct towards women, a man who told others to “grab ‘em by the pussy” and “you can do anything” in reference to women, is to once again enter the oval office. The public outrage and fear shown by many women, not just in America, appear to be entitled as:
How can you trust a man like Donald Trump with your rights, when he has no respect for them himself?
This isn’t even to mention the work Trump’s administration put towards the restriction of reproductive rights in America. During Trump’s first term as president back in 2016, he was able to choose three new Supreme Court justices, which some call a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the perspective of the Supreme Court. The court is now leaning 6-3 conservative with his appointment of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney who were instrumental in the ruling to overturn Roe V Wade in 2022.
Trump’s administration also reintroduced the Reagan-era ‘domestic gag rule’ which aimed to prohibit the referral, or counselling for abortions if a healthcare provider receives funding from Title X (a federal grant program created to allow affordable birth control and reproductive care). While this rule was rescinded almost immediately when Biden took government, it wouldn’t be a surprise if one of Trump’s first acts as president the second time around would mirror his former work in bringing it back.
If the ideals of Trump’s first administration have shown anything to women it’s that their opinions on their bodies do not matter. Neither do they to the people who voted for him this past election, with many Trump supporters taking to social media to ridicule women with misogynistic comments like “Your body, my choice” and “Glass ceiling? Dude it’s a ceiling made of f*king bricks, you will never break it.” Nearly 76 million people voted for Trump in the election, and over 75.9 million people decided that they would rather have a convicted felon, someone who can’t even legally vote be their president over a mixed race woman. A conclusion that many have made is that America hates females and with stats like these I can’t help but agree.
So what could the future for women look like under a Trump presidency this time? Many fear that the roadmap brought out by Project 25, a right-wing 900-page policy wishlist created for a Trump presidency, could take form in the US. Despite Trump claiming that he has nothing to do with it, he could take inspiration from its ideals as he did in his first presidency as the writers of Project the Heritage Foundation boasted that during Trump’s first term, his administration had adopted nearly two-thirds of their proposals. If he does, women will continue to see their rights being stripped away from them. The project makes the dismantling of abortion rights across the US a priority, as it sets out a plan to invoke the Comstock Act which bans ‘obscene materials’ to stop abortion pills from being sent through the post, a lifeline for many women in this post-roe world.
This isn’t even to mention the effect Trump’s presidency will have across the pond. It is a saying that the politics in America will have a knockoff effect on the rest of the world. This was seen clearly by the effects of Trump’s first term in 2016 where more right-wing ideals also saw popularity in countries like the UK with Brexit and the rising interest in the UK party UKIP (whose leader at the time was Nigel Farage) who were credited with the idea of having the UK independence referendum after their win in seats in the European parliament. Trump and therefore America’s choices in 2016, brought forth a powerful surge in hard right-wing politics which could be seen again after his inauguration come January, making women across the globe worry about their rights.
Women should expect more of their rights to be taken away, men to feel that they have more control over a woman’s bodily autonomy than a woman would, and many more women and children dying from not being able to have an abortion regardless of the situation they find themselves in. This isn’t even to mention the fear other minorities like people of colour and the LGBTQ+ community are feeling with the latter going to courthouses to get married in case their rights are also stripped from them.
However, not everything is looking unsettling for women in terms of a right to their own body, as seven states have strengthened protections on their abortion rights. Even in states where Trump won (like Arizona and Missouri) there’s been a majority in the ballots for adopting legal measures to protect reproductive freedoms.
Are women’s futures looking grave? Possibly. But the mystery of Trump’s plans for women’s rights leaves us to only speculate on what he or his party have planned. So to any woman afraid of what the future holds, it’s like Kamala Harris said “it’s going to be okay, you just need to keep fighting”.
Words by Katy Whelan
