On Friday the media tied itself into knots after having been played by the Trump campaign with promises of a “major announcement” regarding whether President Barack Obama was or was not born in the United States. They missed a more important development which would impact half of the U.S. population, namely, future generations of women for decades to come.
[W]hile this moronic sideshow is going down, a report in the Hill today brings a much more important story: Donald Trump took time out of his busy schedule of conspiracy promotion and disavowal to write a letter to America’s anti-abortion leaders, making some new firm promises about what he’ll do on abortion should he be elected president in 53 days.
In the coverage of Trump there has been a glaring disconnect between the media focus on the candidate, which generates the clicks and eyeballs that new media class feeds upon, and the reality of what would actually occur under a Trump Presidency coupled with a Republican Congress. Because if Trump wins, it’s close to a foregone conclusion that the United States Senate and House of Representatives will continue to be maintained under Republican control. The implications of that on the rights of women as they currently stand in this country are enormous.
Here is the letter signed by Trump himself, which the Trump/Pence campaign delivered to his “pro-life” base of support this week, released by the anti-abortion, forced birth organization that styles itself, perversely, as the “Susan B. Anthony List:”
I am committed to:
Nominating pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Signing into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would end painful late-term abortions nationwide.
Defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions…
Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions.
The Susan B. Anthony list is an extremist, anti-woman group that opposes a woman’s right to an abortion in all circumstances and also opposes many forms of contraception. Trump has designated the head of this organization, Marjorie Dannelfelser, as the leader of his “pro-life coalition.” In 2012-14 the SBA backed rabid anti-choicers Ken Cuccinelli and Todd Akin, who infamously claimed that women were unlikely to become pregnant from being raped because their bodies could “shut the whole thing down.”
The group Trump has pledged to support is registered as a 501(c)4 political action organization. As reported by
Bill Moyers.com, its financial backers are not disclosed or readily discoverable.
These are the people who Donald Trump would be beholden to assuming he is elected. As Rebecca Traister , writing for New York Magazine, puts it:
This cannot safely be considered electoral posturing or some wacky new skirmish in a culture war. If Donald Trump is elected president, it will likely be with a Republican congress and Supreme Court seats to fill. He could do every single one of the things he’s promising anti-abortion activists he will do. And those things would return women, in a very real way — in a way that is already happening in state and local jurisdictions around the country — to their secondary status: unable to exert full control over their bodies; barred from making choices about whether or when to bear children based on their health, their economic, or familial status, or the condition of the fetuses they carry.
But by all means, let’s focus on the question of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
For additional information about Dannelfelser and the” SBA List”, see Meteor Blades’ post here.