Mary Duschene
In just two years, Donald Trump has deeply undermined women’s rights.
He was the first sitting President to speak at the anti-choice March for Life. He has signed legislation allowing state and local governments to defund organizations that provide abortion or abortion referrals. He expanded the Global Gag Rule to encompass seventeen times the aid dollars it previously did, endangering additional hundreds of thousands of women around the world. He proposed a budget for fiscal year 2018 that eliminated all funding for international family planning programs. He expressed concern for male “victims” of the #MeToo movement while championing a Supreme Court nominee who had been credibly accused of attempted rape.
In the past week, though, women won three small but significant victories in the courts.
On April 26, the Kansas Supreme Court affirmed that the state Constitution protected a woman’s right to “decide whether to continue a pregnancy.” The 6-1 ruling struck down a 2015 law that would have banned a law that would have banned a common procedure used to perform second-trimester abortions.
“This is the first time that the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that abortion rights are protected under the state Constitution,” said Elizabeth Nash, an abortion legislation expert at the Guttmacher Institute. “Nearly all of the abortion restrictions in the state, they could be challenged and struck down, with this ruling.”
Now that Trump has seated two conservative justices on the Supreme Court, he’s dead set on packing the circuit courts with ultra-conservative, judges—many of whom are strongly anti-choice.
On April 25, a federal district court judge in Washington issued a temporary injunction blocking Trump’s new Title X gag rule. The gag rule would prevent organizations that receive Title X funds from performing abortions or referring patients to organizations that do. Portions of the rule were slated to go into effect on May 3. Now, thanks to the injunction, doctors can continue providing their patients with abortion care and information until the cases against the gag rule are heard.
And on April 22, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to deliver gender-pay-gap data by September 30, which the Trump Administration has been stalling on for two years.
The new Title X rule, which was finalized in February, emulates the Global Gag Rule that has been used intermittently for decades to prevent foreign organizations that receive U.S. aid from providing abortions or referring patients to other organizations that do. And, like the Global Gag Rule, the domestic gag rule primarily hurts those who are already most vulnerable.
When the proposed changes to Title X rules were first reported, Georgeanne Usova, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, called out the dangers of the policy in a statement: “This administration is attempting to insert its ideology into exam rooms. As with so many of the Trump White House’s policies, it is the most vulnerable communities that will be hit hardest.”
“For close to fifty years,” Usova continued, “the Title X program has ensured access to affordable reproductive health care to low income patients who would otherwise go without.”
Of the four million people who benefited in 2017 from Title X-funded services, two-thirds were living at or below the poverty line. A third of U.S. women with low incomes count on Title-X funded clinics—community health centers, Planned Parenthood, or other family-planning clinics—for their contraception.
The new Title X gag rule will force clinics to choose between providing their patients with legally guaranteed abortion care and information or losing funding that supports other essential services like mammograms, cervical cancer screenings and STD testing.
Judge Chutkan’s order to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission may seem less tangible, but is actually a big win for economic equality.
In the past, companies have not been required to report pay by gender, race and title—data that research shows are necessary to understand and remedy gender- and race-based pay discrepancies. Collecting pay data will also make it easier for women and people of color to prove when pay discrimination is happening. And, the information gathered could provide evidence that strengthens the already-strong case for pay-gap legislation.
These wins are heartening, but they come amidst further setbacks.
In mid-March, Trump’s State Department released its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, without any mention of reproductive rights for the second year in a row—a move that Stephanie L. Schmid, U.S. Foreign Policy Counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, described as being “part of a comprehensive effort to erase sexual and reproductive health and rights from global discourse.”
Now that Trump has seated two conservative justices on the Supreme Court, he’s dead set on packing the circuit courts with ultra-conservative, judges—many of whom are strongly anti-choice. And he’s finding growing success thanks to the efforts of a Republican Senate majority that has overlooked inexperience and problematic records and pushed to fast-track the confirmation process even at the cost of changing long-standing Senate rules.
In another attack on reproductive rights, even for victims of rape, Trump’s delegation to the United Nations insisted that references to “sexual and reproductive health” be removed from a resolution intended to prevent the use of rape as a weapon of war, threatening to veto it otherwise.
When the resolution passed on April 23, it was missing key paragraphs, including one calling specifically for reproductive health services for victims of rape.
According to CNN, the now-missing paragraph read: “Recognizing the importance of providing timely assistance to survivors of sexual violence, urges United Nations entities and donors to provide non-discriminatory and comprehensive health services, including sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial, legal, and livelihood support and other multi-sectoral services for survivors of sexual violence, taking into account the specific needs of persons with disabilities.”
The truth is that much time, energy, and money has been—and will continue to be—spent by women’s rights advocates to block the Trump Administration’s ongoing attempts to undermine gender equity. But women aren’t just playing defense. A number of proactive bills have been introduced in Congress that could ensure reproductive rights and economic equity.
The Paycheck Fairness Act, introduced in January by Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, would ensure equal pay for equal work, protect employees who discuss pay and prohibit employers from using salary history to set pay, among other protections.
On the reproductive rights front, the EACH Woman Act, introduced by Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California and Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, would undo restrictions on using federal funding for abortions, prevent the federal government from interfering with private insurance that covers abortions, and ensure that all women who receive insurance or medical care through the federal government have abortion coverage.
The Trump Administration’s war on women is multi-fronted and aggressive. Bills like these that seek to protect women’s rights are a critical front in efforts to counteract the constant attacks.