With Trump as our new President, women's reproductive rights are at risk.
We all know Trump opposes Planned Parenthood. He says he is "...totally against abortion, having to do with Planned Parenthood." Although, right after that, he says, "But millions and millions of women -- cervical cancer, breast cancer -- are helped by Planned Parenthood." However he goes on to say that he would defund it "...because of the abortion factor, which they say is 3 percent." Then he says he actually doesn't know what the percentage is, but he would still defund it.
Lets dissect this.
To anyone who is anti-abortion: Sure, Trump is against abortion, however, only after 20 weeks. He told Bloomberg News in January that abortion should be banned at some point in pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother. In September, Trump wrote a letter to anti-abortion leaders saying he would sign the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks. This means if a women is 19 weeks pregnant, she can still get an abortion.
Let's think about pregnancy at 20 weeks. That's half way through. At that point, the parents could find out the child's sex, and they would need to start thinking about the delivery of the baby. So while you may be against abortion, Trump only is to an extent.
With that being said, there are still ways Trump's presidency can negatively impact reproductive rights. As I mentioned above, he wants to defund Planned Parenthood becasue they perform abortions. Which, as many of us should know by now, is only one of the many things they do.
To anyone who wants to defund Planned Parenthood: "Planned Parenthood is one of the nation's leading providers of affordable health care for women, men, and young people, and the nation's largest provider of sex education."
Too often, parents leave sex education up the their children's schools, or they prefer their children not to learn about sex at all. Planned Parenthood not only provides sexual education and information, but also it offers sexual and reproductive health care to nearly five million women, men, and adolescents worldwide in a single year.
Many people assume that Planned Parenthood mainly performs abortions, however, that isn't true. In fact, 80 percent of their patients receive services that prevent (not abort) unintended pregnancies. Becasue of this, approximately 579,000 unintended pregnancies have been avoided in a single year.
In a given year, Planned Parenthood also provides more than 270,000 Pap tests, 360,000 breast exams, and 4.2 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including more than 650,000 HIV tests. Only three percent of all services are abortion related.
Trump's plan and its effects: Trump had recently declared Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser, the leader of his “Pro-Life Coalition.” This organization opposes emergency contraceptives such as the morning-after pill, and the copper IUD ParaGard. It claims that these cause "early abortions". Again, this is not true. These methods actually prevent ovulation, and fertilization, so the sperm never actually touches the egg.
If Trump does what he's promised to pro-life movements, he could effectually end Planned Parenthood, leaving millions of men and women, myself included, without any affordable health care. This means we would lose a free HIV testing facility, this means I could not longer afford birth control, this means women will have an even harder time trying to control the decisions of their own body.
Restricting access to abortions and birth control actually increases the number of abortions women have, both safe and not. It can lead women to attempt a self-induced abortion. In 2015, in the United States, there were approximately 119,000 searches for the exact phrase “how to have a miscarriage.”
In fact, according to Google date, "There were some 4,000 searches looking for directions on coat hanger abortions, including about 1,300 for the exact phrase 'how to do a coat hanger abortion.' There were also a few hundred looking into abortion through bleaching one’s uterus and punching one’s stomach."
Are these really better alternatives than having a safe, legal abortion?
If nothing else, remember this: Even if the Trump administration outlaws abortions completely, that does not mean they won't happen. Without unfettered access to birth control methods, especially long lasting ones such as IUDs, women are more likely to engage in dangerous and drastic measures of abortion. Trump could send women back in time 40 years: unable to control their own bodies; forbidden from making choices about whether or when to have children based on their health, their economic, or familial status.
