Donald Trump's favorite word when talking about abortion bans is "beautiful." When asked in June on Fox News about the states passing abortion bans after his Supreme Court nominees overturned Roe v. Wade, Trump declared "it’s a beautiful thing to watch." He claims to be women's "protector," and recently told women that they "will no longer be thinking about abortion" if he gets elected because women's "lives will be happy, beautiful."
We were reminded again this week of what Trump's "protection" of women looks like in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended nearly half a century of abortion rights, which was only possible because Trump made good on his 2016 promise to appoint justices who opposed Roe v. Wade. On Wednesday, ProPublica reported on the deaths of two Texas women who were denied miscarriage care at the hospital because that standard of care for failing pregnancies is banned under Texas's draconian abortion law. The Washington Post also reported this week about a Nevada woman who was charged with manslaughter after mourning a miscarriage on Facebook.
While one of the two deceased women in Texas is still unknown, the family of Josseli Barnica spoke to ProPublica. The 28-year-old mother was pregnant with her second child when she miscarried at 17 weeks. Unable to remove the dying fetus, due to Texas law, doctors stood by helplessly while Barnica got sicker from infection over days and finally died. The case sounds much like two from Georgia, where 28-year-old Amber Thurman and 41-year-old Candi Miller passed away, unable to get post-abortion care because of that state's ban. In Nevada, 26-year-old Patience Frazier was arrested after miscarrying a fetus she named "Abel." Authorities claimed she had deliberately aborted her pregnancy, but medical experts say her method — eating a bunch of cinnamon — cannot induce a miscarriage.
Despite being the person most responsible for the deaths of Barnica, Miller, and Thurman, Trump continues to call himself a "protector" of women, telling a Wisconsin crowd Wednesday he will "protect" women "whether the women like it or not." To normal people, using the posture and language of a violent threat when claiming to "protect" women is confusing. But with Trump, it makes a sick sort of sense, beyond even his history as a serial sexual assailant. In the MAGA parlance, "protect" is a dog whistle for their true intentions for women: domination.
The word reflects a larger tendency of Trump and his followers to see women not as people, but as property of men, especially powerful white men. As journalist Kelly Weill recently argued, in the MAGA worldview, the family is regarded as "a sexualized project of male domination." In this view, women are to be "protected" from outsiders who would rape them, but only because it's a property crime against their male owner. But a father or husband has free rein to dispose of his female property as he will. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson articulated this repeatedly by arguing that sexual abuse of minors isn't really serious if the father has married them off to the rapist first.
“I'm just telling you that arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old and a 27-year-old is not the same as pulling a stranger off the street and raping her. That's b—t,” Carlson said.... The criminal charges that Carlson called “b—t” stemmed from the case of a 14-year-old girl, whom [Warren] Jeffs had forced into marriage with an adult cousin. The girl testified that her husband frequently raped her, and that she survived multiple miscarriages.
MAGA doesn't care about women and girls who die because of abortion bans. Those who die from illegal abortions are viewed as rejecting patriarchal authority and deserving of that death. But even in the cases of those who miscarry and are denied medical care, there's not much concern. That makes sense if you view women less as people and more as property. A woman who miscarries and needs medical care is, in this worldview, much like a malfunctioning appliance. It's just as well to toss it out and get another that won't need as much maintenance.
In these four cases, the women also fall out of the narrow zone of "protection" Trump imagines because of their racial identities or class status. Miller and Thurman were Black and Barnica was an immigrant from Honduras. Frazier, as the Washington Post documented, was impoverished and frequently homeless. The deputy who arrested her had known her from around town, and compared Frazier to "her own mother, who she said often left her five children to fend for themselves in a drug-ridden neighborhood."
But even middle-class white women should know they aren't safe. A number of such women — such as Amanda Zurawski and Kate Cox of Texas — have spoken about their own horrifying experiences being denied care for failing pregnancies, which left Zurawski so badly injured she will likely never give birth. Better-off white women are certainly valued more in the MAGA worldview, but they are still objects judged by how well they serve the patriarchal system. By failing to be "good" at pregnancy, they are seen as malfunctioning and undeserving of care. By speaking out, they have turned into rebellious women who are condemned for their boldness. Anti-abortion leaders relentlessly demonize these women, calling them liars or worse.
Trump continues to deny he wants a national abortion ban, but the safe bet is that, if he wins in November, there will be a national abortion ban. First of all, Trump lies constantly about everything, so his denials on this front are worth nothing — more important is his unwillingness to commit to vetoing any abortion ban a Republican Congress would pass. But even if Republicans don't control Congress, Project 2025 outlines a plan to ban abortion pills through the back door, by revoking their FDA approval. Even if Trump wins, he will lose the majority of female voters, probably by a wide margin. He's a spiteful misogynist, and banning abortion nationwide will simply feel like his "revenge" on women who rejected his "protection."
