Reason # 94: Women’s Health
Why do we need to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House?
Two days ago, I related how Donald Trump and his altar boy J.D. Vance had blithely told the American public how Trump had “saved” the Affordable Care Act, a great example of “the big lie”. They have both also tried to walk back 8 years of their own statements and policies on the critically important topic of women’s health.
In an essay I wrote on Facebook entitled “Everything I Know about Feminism, I Learned from my Cat.” I described how my female cat showed me how disastrously an undesired pregnancy can change, even demolish, a female’s future life. The tom cat has his way and walks off never to be seen again. The feral mother cat is now in a life or death struggle to manage her pregnancy and raise her litter of kittens in a hostile uncaring world. No, this is not a reference to ravenous Haitians, it refers to homelessness, deprivation, lack of health care, starvation and death.
Things are not typically this dire for human females caught in the identical dilemma, but survival can be threatened, specifically in Republican states, when full access to high quality reproductive care is denied or even criminalized.
The inequality in being a woman has been glaringly obvious for millennia and solutions have arisen only in the past century. Women have fought for and gained the right to education, to work, to vote and to divorce. This victory has gained them a more level playing field, but females still lag badly in health care. Republican states still block an Equal Rights Amendment.
A girl’s carefree life ends with menarche. From now on she will not only need access to hygienic products but also is henceforward at risk of unwanted pregnancy.
Let’s start with “period poverty”. 2 billion women worldwide do not have access to basic menstrual hygiene, and it has major ill effects, e.g. lack of education. This is not just a third world phenomenon. It applies to the U.S., where elderly men get priapic support from Viagra prescriptions, while 25% of young women in many states (guess which ones) have trouble paying for hygienic products as well as the “pink tax” on tampons – categorized as “luxury products”.
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2024/05/period-poverty-why-millions-of-girls-and-women-cannot-afford-their-periods
…
The Republican response to this dilemma is to mock Tim Walz as “Tampon Tim” for making sure that restrooms in Minnesota schools provided access to menstruation products for students.
This is a relatively minor problem compared to the catastrophe of unwanted pregnancy. There are a number of obvious ways to prevent this disaster. First is sex education. Big problem, the religious right opposes frank discussion of the facts of life and Republicans bow to this medieval policy. OK then just take it out of the classroom and let the kids read about it. Sorry, nope. “We don’t want our babies reading none a them there dirty books. Get ‘em out of our schools and libraries. But I do support that First Amendment stuff.”
Can’t rely on public education, well we will just have to rely on contraception. Margaret Sanger was harassed and prosecuted for “pornography” when she printed leaflets illustrating contraceptive methods for women in public clinics. The religious right still opposes contraception in many settings and Republican states still seek to prevent access to contraception for teenage girls.
The combination of policies practically ensures hundreds of thousands of unwanted pregnancies. Young girls do not have the knowledge and strength to protect themselves from older more experienced men including predatory family members. Rape and incest are major contributors to unwanted pregnancy.
What happens next is vividly portrayed by Victor Hugo in Les Miserable, where the bright spring of Fantine’s life is choked off as she has to sell first her hair, then her teeth and finally her body to pay for her child’s care.
That leaves two choices; either carry the pregnancy to term or seek an abortion. Having the child brings an end to youth and places a marked limitation on the future. How will I care for the child and get an education? Where will I live? How can I build a career? Will I be forced to marry? Etc. etc..
Row vs. Wade was a 1973 Supreme Court decision written by Justice Harry Blackmun, a Nixon appointee and former Mayo Clinic lawyer who had been advised by Joseph Hyde Pratt MD, a Mayo GYN surgeon. It legalized abortion nationally. No longer would women have to risk “coat hanger” or “back street” abortions and terrible deaths from sepsis.
Now, fifty years later, women in most of the country have lost access to personal choice in a decision whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. The Supreme Court Judges appointed by Donald Trump have voted to allow states to undermine women’s healthcare policy. Now we have a complex, confusing patchwork, where not only are women unable to get an abortion in their home state, but may be prosecuted if they seek care elsewhere. Caregivers are also threatened by fines and jail sentences. Formerly only arson, bombing and assassination threatened those who provided abortion care.
OK, but at least we can still have a “medication abortion”, without need for anesthesia or surgical removal of the fetus. Well no, we don’t. Republicans have lied about the safety of medications and banned them as well in many venues.
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089290488/as-medication-abortion-becomes-dominant-red-states-restrict-pills
Then there are the tubal pregnancies. This is a life-threatening complication, where the fetus implants in the tube, not the uterus. There is no possibility that the fetus can be saved, only the risk that the mother will bleed to death. Tubal pregnancy occurs in more than 1% of pregnancies and is the number one cause of first-trimester maternal deaths! Doctors and nurses in red states are now afraid to treat such cases and women are dying.
https://newrepublic.com/article/166411/ectopic-pregnancy-roe-abortion-ban
If all of this is not crazy enough already, there are many women and their spouses who ardently desire children but are unable to conceive. Modern medicine has finally made that possible with the miracle of in-vitro fertilization. Republicans seek to block this option as well.
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23414/senate-republicans-block-ivf-legislation
Women also seek help in the immediate post-partum period and time to start their child off on the right foot, but still face opposition from Republicans.
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-republicans-who-voted-against-maternity-services-veterans-1764083
Although both Trump and Vance are slinking away from their extreme positions, they have each contributed to the godawful mess in major ways.
If you elect them, they will continue to seek a national ban on abortion and ratification of the entire Republican assault on woman’s rights and healthcare access, as reflected in the provisions of Project 2025.
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/how-project-2025-seeks-obliterate-srhr
I implore you; do not make this terrible mistake.
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Fred Grannis
October 16, 2024