Republican leaders wish people would “stop whining” about the fact that one in three American women now live in states that ban abortion.
Bernie Moreno, Ohio’s GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, recently went so far as to say “it’s a little crazy … that women that are like past 50,” are concerned about reproductive rights. “I’m thinking to myself: I don’t think that’s an issue for you.”
As someone who falls in that category and appreciated the protections once guaranteed by our U.S. Constitution, I can assure Moreno that I am passionate about seeing them restored for future generations.
Former President Donald Trump says he can make “this nightmare” over abortion go away if elected president by assuming the mantle of “protector” of American women.
At a Sept. 21 campaign rally in Wilmington, N.C., Trump said that under his administration women would “no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. I will protect women at a level never seen before. You will no longer be in danger … you will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today, you will be protected, and I will be your protector.
“You will no longer be thinking about abortion,” Trump said.
Besides being Handmaid’s Tale creepy, Trump is wrong.
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, abandoning 50 years of a constitutional right to an abortion, the decision has created a hodgepodge of state laws.
Today, 14 states ban abortion completely and others have severely limited its access by criminalizing it after the earliest weeks of pregnancy as well as limiting access to birth control and fertilization treatments.
As bad as it is now, it could get worse.
Many fear that Trump’s promise to fix “this national nightmare” over reproductive rights is to enact a nationwide abortion ban as proposed in Project 2025, the 920-page right-wing manifesto written under the premise Trump is re-elected.
In the recent months that Project 2025 has gained national attention, Trump has tried to distance himself from its extremist mission to remake the federal government.
But “when someone takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re going to use it,” advised former football coach Tim Walz in his acceptance speech as Kamala Harris’s running mate for the Democratic ticket.
Because Americans deserve the freedom to make their own reproductive decisions whether as individuals or as families, grassroots efforts to codify such rights are mounting in states that lack such protections.
In the Nov. 5 election, abortion measures are on the ballots of 10 states.
