Trump presidency threatens to worsen our already-bleak state of abortion rights
A new report details how much of a threat Trump poses.
Abortion access in the United States is highly restricted, and Donald Trump’s impending presidency threatens to restrict it even further. According to a new study, the entire country is likely to reach the “severely restricted” level, where a majority of states now stand.
NARAL Pro-Choice America released a report Tuesday titled “Who Decides? The status of women’s reproductive rights in the United States,” which looks at the increasing number of both federal and state-level restrictions on abortion. According to the report, 26 different states enacted 56 different anti-choice measures in 2016, including abortion bans, TRAP laws, counseling and referral bans, and other restrictions.
With four years of a Republican White House, mostly Republican governors, and Republican control in a majority of state legislatures, NARAL said it expects these restrictions to multiply.
“The state of the reproductive union is frightening, it’s tenuous, and this new administration could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” NARAL President Ilyse G. Hogue said in a call Tuesday with reporters.
“Donald Trump’s vision for America and the policies he has proposed are a clear and present danger to women, families, and our constitutionally protected right to access abortion,” Hogue wrote in the report.
Both Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence have said or shown that they do not support a woman’s right to choose, and the administration represents the “clearest threat to reproductive freedom in a generation,” the report says. Despite polls that show that most Americans think abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances, Trump has said he will fill the vacant Supreme Court seat with someone who will overturn Roe v. Wade. By securing an anti-choice Supreme Court, Trump could ensure that his anti-choice legacy lasts long after he leaves office.
In the shorter term, Trump has also indicated that his administration will not be friendly toward reproductive health advocates. Tom Price, his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is staunchly anti-choice and has co-sponsored legislation to give zygotes full legal protection.
But even before Trump was elected, states across the country were moving toward more restrictive reproductive health laws last year.
Louisiana alone enacted seven measures to restrict access, while Mississippi enacted six and South Dakota five.
Meanwhile, a majority of Congress is also anti-choice. In the Senate, 53 lawmakers are anti-choice,while seven are mixed-choice and 40 pro-choice. The proportion of anti-choice members of the U.S. House is even greater, with 243 against and just 176 pro-choice.
On the state level, the situation is even more dire. As of the 2016 election, 30 governors are anti-choice, seven are classified as “mixed-choice,” and just 13 are pro-choice, according to the report.
Just four states and the District of Columbia have pro-choice governments (where both the governor and the majority of the legislature are pro-choice): California, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Oregon.
The report ranks each state according to its overall level of access, and this year for the first time since NARAL began reporting more than 25 years ago, 26 states are currently in a place of “severely restricted access.”
“Access to abortion and reproductive health care services is more threatened now than at any time since the passage of Roe v. Wade,” Hogue said.