It appears that last week, Donald Trump suddenly discovered that more than half of voters are women.
That’s the only way to account for the fact that he rolled out two ideas aimed at women — neither of which would solve the problems facing women and families. After spending his entire campaign attacking and insulting women, Donald Trump is desperately trying to pander to them because he can’t come close to the lifetime of work Hillary Clinton has done to help women and families.
His half-baked proposal on maternity leave only applies to women who have given birth. This proposal, like his whole campaign, leaves out an entire swath of people in America who don’t fit his narrow version of what makes a family. It doesn't respect the needs of fathers, or adoptive or fostering parents, and continues the myth of a 1950s world where women take care of children and men work.
Now, he has a proposal that could make birth control more expensive for millions of women and even eliminate access to some types of long-acting birth control, like IUDs. This is not a solution. Donald Trump is really saying that he wants more than 55 million women to lose coverage for no-copay birth control, which could put it financially out of reach for many.
The reality is that Donald Trump has not only spent his entire career dismissing and insulting women — going so far as to call women pigs and dogs — he has also spent the last 15 months promising policies that endanger and harm them. He’s promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which gives women access to no-copay birth control, saving them an estimated $1.4 billion a year. And he’s promised to appoint anti-abortion Supreme Court justices in hopes of overturning Roe v. Wade, striking women’s constitutional right to abortion. He’s also promised to block patients who rely on public health programs from going to Planned Parenthood health centers — where an estimated 1 in 5 American women have come for care.
To see how Trump’s policies would play out in real life, we need look no further than my home state of Texas. Women in Texas face barriers to care, some of which are insurmountable, and it is literally killing them. New statistics released last month paint a clear, stark, and tragic picture of what happens when politics trump the needs of women and families.
In 2011, Texas politicians blocked patients who rely on public health programs from going to Planned Parenthood health centers for care. At the same time, they slashed the state’s family planning budget by two-thirds. More than 80 health centers closed as a result. And restrictions on safe and legal abortion — ruled unconstitutional earlier this summer by the Supreme Court — shuttered more than half of the state’s abortion providers.
In just one East Texas county where the local health center lost 60 percent of its family planning funding, the number of abortions increased by 191 percent in two years. It’s obvious women who did not want to be pregnant didn’t have access to the care they needed to prevent pregnancy.
At the same time, between 2010 and 2012,
These statistics are staggering. But what is most heartbreaking is that behind these numbers are real women who cannot get the health care that should be their right — mothers working hard to support their families, students preparing to make their place in the world, young women building careers and charting their futures.
While Texas is the most glaring example of Trump’s brand of political ambition and division running roughshod over the health and safety of marginalized communities, it is not the only example.
Donald Trump chose as his running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who as congressman led the charge to block patients who rely on public health programs from going to Planned Parenthood health centers for care. And while he was governor of Indiana, Scott County experienced an outbreak of HIV. Pence and his predecessor had cut public health budgets, opposed quality sex education, and then when the outbreak occurred, Pence delayed life-saving action because of his personal beliefs.
Under a Trump administration, anti-women’s health policies would go national. And those who would suffer most are women with low incomes, women in underserved communities, and women of color, who face systemic barriers to access the care they need.
Even without decades of examples of Trump’s misogyny in his own words, his proposals on women’s health are enough to show he does not care about the well-being of women.
At a time when anti-women’s health politicians in states across the country are endangering women’s lives with harmful laws and policies, we need a champion in the White House. We need to elect the strongest, most qualified candidate in history. We need to elect Hillary Clinton.
Cecile Richards is the president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
Follow Cecile on Twitter.
