To Protect Women’s Freedom, Liberty, Life, Vote for Harris, Democrats and the ERA

By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com, editor@news-photos-features.comTrump boasts that he is responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade, which overnight took away women’s autonomy and self-determination, rendering females no more than brood mares or a “host” for a clump of cells with less power to save her own life.After the Imperial Supremes’ Dobbs Decision overturning Roe, 22 states – governing the lives of one-third of women of child-bearing age and their families - immediately instituted abortion bans, criminalizing pregnancy and threatening hospitals and doctors with long prison terms, loss of medical license and astronomical fines.At the same time, the ChristoFascists jeopardized access to abortion medication (used in half of all abortions), are actively trying to institute laws preventing pregnant women from traveling out of state to the “free states” to get life-saving reproductive health care, are defying federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency care, and are forcing countless women to suffer pain, trauma, near-death, organ failure and loss of future ability to have a baby.Maternal mortality – already high in those same anti-abortion states – have spiked. Among them Amber Thurman of Georgia who endured 20 hours of severe pain as her miscarriage led to sepsis before she died – her death ruled “preventable” - leaving a six-year old without a mother. Infant mortality is also spiking - Texas’ abortion ban was linked to a 13% increase in infant and newborn deaths, NBC News reported.“This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down, Vice President Kamala Harris stated. “In more than 20 states, Trump Abortion Bans are preventing doctors from providing basic medical care. Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”“Two years ago when the Dobbs decision came down, we knew this could happen. There is a word preventable, and there is a word predictable,” she declared.Those same Trumpers who see women as less than sentient human beings, who are happy to inflict cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment which protects even the most grizzly murderer, are now going after contraception – even Morning After pills which could prevent a rape victim from being forced to give birth to her rapists’ child - and denying countless families the opportunity to have a child through invitro fertilization and other fertility methods.At the same time, states are mounting a record number of prosecutions against women who miscarried or had stillbirths, charging them with homicide – 200 in the year after Roe fell. Indeed, in 2016, Trump said “there has to be some form of punishment" for women who terminate a pregnancy and just recently said states should be able to prosecute women and their doctors. So on top of the emotional and physical roller coaster of pregnancy, the result of criminalizing pregnancy has been to add the anxiety and horror of a complication and making women too afraid to seek out care. There has even been a surge in states with abortion bans of women – especially those who would face high-risk pregnancy or fear some genetic abnormality - undergoing surgical sterilization.“No one should have to live in fear that their conversations with their doctor or that their medical claims data might be used to target or track them for seeking lawful reproductive health care,” declared HHS Official Melanie Fontes Rainer:And Trump, who says “I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of ..Roe v Wade,” says “it’s a beautiful thing,” calls himself the “protector of women” and “father of IVF” (yet only recently learned what it was) exclaims to women in all-caps late night Truth Social post that when he is sent back to the White House “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION.”Trump doesn’t need Congress to effectively end women’s reproductive freedom. Project 2025, the operations manual prepared for Trump by Heritage Foundation, calls for enforcing the 1800s Comstock Act, enacted to control pornography, to make it illegal to send abortion medication or contraceptives through the mail (bet Viagra will still be OK). Using a “personhood” standard which declares a fertilized egg more right to life than a living female, they will effectively ban IVF and other reproductive medical treatments, and even morning after pills to help women who have been raped. (Vance and Republicans already voted twice to defeat protections for access to IVF and contraception.)What is more, the party that found a mask mandate during a public health crisis an affront to “liberty” would turn Health & Human Services into the federal Department of Life, with a Pregnancy Czar to surveil women. Sounds improbably dystopian? In 2019, even before the ChristoFascist Supremes overturned Roe, Missouri’s state health department kept a spreadsheet tracking menstrual periods of Planned Parenthood patients. Florida proposed tracking high school girls’ menstrual cycles and inspecting their genitals in order to join a sports team. And Texas MAGA extremist Ken Paxton recently filed a lawsuit challenging federal health privacy laws in order to start surveilling women’s reproductive health care.The rise in already unconscionable rates of maternal mortality and infant mortality in those states with abortion bans (which also tend to have the worst health care) prove the abortion bans are not about “pro-life” but are about “controlling women.”The 8th amendment in the Constitution bans “cruel and unusual punishment” that protects even mass murderers facing the conditions of their execution. But just as with Trump’s migrant family separation policy, cruelty is the point. It is about power and dehumanizing others – no different than what underpinned slavery.Trump wants to turn back the clock not just 50 years, but 150 years, when women were chattel, with no more rights than slaves, when their property became their husband’s or father’s and when men could beat or kill their wives and children without consequence. It’s been only 100 years that women could vote, and only 50 years that women could get an apartment, a mortgage or business loan without a man’s signature, leave an abusive marriage or claim the “equal protection” of the 14th amendment, and access to jobs, college admissions and wages.Ending reproductive freedom- bodily autonomy and the ability to decide their future - reverses all of that progress – which is the objective. And for the life of me I cannot understand how each and every one of these abortion bans are not overturned based on the 1, 4, 5, 8, 13, and 14 amendments to the Constitution.“We’re not going back,” Harris has declared.As then-Senator Kamala Harris interrogated Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,’ Harris declared. “And I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v Wade, as President of the United States I will proudly sign it into law. But understand, if Donald Trump were to be reelected, he will sign a national abortion ban.”Women’s reproductive freedom does not just affect 50 percent of the population, it affects 100 percent - every man, woman and child. “Unhinged. Deranged. Dangerous. Spreading disinformation. Making ludicrous claims. And showing absolutely no empathy for the lives lost due to his abortion bans. Enough is enough,” declared Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju. “We can end this November 5th & elect an administration & Congress that will restore our freedoms.Vote for Kamala Harris and Democrats to protect that freedom, protect your right to life, and in New York and nine other states, vote ballot measures to enshrine reproductive freedom.See also:Opinion | This Is What It Takes to Get an Abortion in AmericaBiden-Harris Administration Expands Coverage of Contraception Under the Affordable Care Act as Republican Elected Officials Continue Attacks on Reproductive Freedom __________________________ © 2024 News & Photo Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. For editorial feature and photo information, go to www.news-photos-features.com, email editor@news-photos-features.com. Blogging at www.dailykos.com/blogs/NewsPhotosFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures, Tweet @KarenBRubin Threads: @news_and_photo_features