Michael Abrahams | The American right’s continuing war on women

Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, is getting heat over his “childless cat lady” remark. During a Fox News interview in 2021, Vance told host Tucker Carlson, “We are effectively running this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Vance’s targets, which included Vice President Kamala Harris, should come as no surprise to those of us familiar with American politics. The GOP has a penchant for misogynistic narratives and a lack of empathy for women, especially concerning their reproductive health.

Former president Donald Trump is not averse to making chauvinistic comments such as “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?” But it goes deeper than just words. During his tenure as president, some of Trump’s choices exposed his lack of concern for women and their health. He hired Katy Talento, who falsely claimed that birth control can cause “miscarriages of already-conceived children” to lead health policy at the White House. He nominated Neil Gorsuch, who believes bosses should be able to impede their employees’ access to birth control, for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. And he appointed law professor Teresa Manning, who once claimed “contraception doesn’t work,” as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

IGNORANCE

What is disturbing is not just the flippant attitude towards women’s reproductive health, but also the ignorance or dishonesty displayed by those in positions of authority regarding such an important issue. In 2012, during his bid for the US Senate, during an interview on St Louis television station KTVI-TV, former Missouri Congressman Todd Akin was asked whether he believed abortion was justified in cases of rape. He responded: “It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” In other words, if a woman conceives after a sexual encounter, she wants it. It was consensual.

Not only did Akin’s declaration reek of victim-blaming, it was also wrong. Data on the issue reveals otherwise. Not only does scientific consensus show that rape is at least as likely to lead to pregnancy as consensual sexual intercourse, some studies suggest that rape may result in higher pregnancy rates. We all have the right to express our opinions. The problem with the American right is not just stating opinion as fact, but also using these beliefs to influence the establishment of laws that have the potential to affect the well-being of women negatively.

Akin’s remarks were stupid. But what transpired in Ohio in 2019 was insane. That year, a bill, HB 413, was introduced in that state’s legislature requiring doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus or face charges of “abortion murder”. But here’s the thing. Such a procedure is not feasible and therefore does not exist in medical science.

An ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy in which the embryo grows in a site other than the normal position inside the uterus, the most common site being in one of the fallopian tubes. A pregnancy in the fallopian tube will not grow to viability. If the pregnancy is not interrupted, the risk of the fallopian tube rupturing is very high, and such a situation will place the woman’s life at risk. In fact, a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, which can result in massive internal haemorrhage, is a medical emergency and the leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester.

INTERRUPT IT

The appropriate way to manage an ectopic pregnancy is to interrupt it. Apparently, this news did not make it three states west of Ohio. In 2022, Missouri state representative Brian Seitz introduced HB 2810, a bill that would make it a class A felony to not only facilitate or perform an abortion on a woman carrying an unborn child of more than ten weeks gestational age but also to terminate an ectopic pregnancy. Like Akin, Seitz is either uninformed or grossly dishonest as he insisted that doctors are unable to determine if a pregnancy is ectopic, which is untrue. The inconvenient truth is that legislators in Ohio and Missouri want to criminalise life-saving procedures for women.

And the assault on women’s control of their reproductive health continues. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court, America’s most conservative in 90 years, overturned Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision in which it was ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protects the right to have an abortion. On July 14, 2022, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bill that would protect the rights of women to travel to other states to access abortion care legally.

Conservatives detest abortion, so they would facilitate women having access to contraception. Right? Wrong. On June 5, Senate Republicans blocked legislation designed to protect women’s access to contraception. Okay, so they would facilitate women’s access to procedures to help them to conceive. Right? Wrong again. One week later, on June 13, 2024, Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would make it a right nationwide for women to access in vitro fertilisation and other fertility treatments.

For the right, the well-being of women is not a priority. It is all about controlling their bodies and diminishing their autonomy.

Michael Abrahams is an obstetrician and gynaecologist, social commentator and human-rights advocate. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and michabe_1999@hotmail.com, or follow him on X , formerly Twitter, @mikeyabrahams.