Bolstered by the election of Donald J. Trump, the Ohio legislature last week tacked a, "heartbeat," abortion restriction provision criminalizing abortions after the detection of fetal heartbeat. This provision, an afterthought appended onto a child abuse prevention bill, is just the first as conservatives struggle to hide their glee at the chance to take over the Supreme Court, and through it, control of the nation’s wombs. President Elect Donald J. Trump’s brilliance, yes, brilliance, is the ability to understand what the, “other,” wants when negotiating deals. As the holdout, “Never Trump,” conservatives, up to and including Senator Ted Cruz, fell like dominos prior to the election, a clear picture of the deal-maker-in-chief’s offer came into focus – in exchange for supporting thrice married, tall-tale-Trump, the Christian conservative wing of the Republican Party would get an ironclad guarantee that the judges Trump appoints to the Supreme Court will be, in Vice President Elect Mike Pence’s words, “in the tradition of Justice Scalia.” The conservative activist’s hold on the court will last long beyond Trump, perhaps for a generation to come, so from their point of view it was a very good deal indeed. For Trump’s part, his indifference to female consent is well documented; this concession was no concession at all. According to the Columbus Dispatch, “The election of Donald Trump emboldened majority Republicans in the Ohio General Assembly.” All this before the electoral college has even met.
The beauty of Trump for the right, is that unlike ideologue George W. Bush, he genuinely doesn’t care one way or another about women’s right to choose. The election campaign gaff, his assertion that women who have abortions should be punished, was just him calibrating the message to seal the deal. By the October 19th Presidential Debate, he’d honed the message, declaring, “I’m prolife,” adding that overturning Roe v. Wade would, “happen automatically,” under a Trump presidency. According to the Center for Disease Control general fertility rates fell in the US to an all-time record low of 62.5 births per 1,000 for women aged 15–44 in 2013. While this trend is often attributed to the universal decline in fertility rates as women’s education levels rise – the reality is that if mothering multiple children led women to economic security, dignity, autonomy, and respect, they’d do it. But the right is determined to have it all – to keep women poor and dependent though having multiple children. While this issue was not high on voters’ priorities, if Trump keeps his promise, it will be consequential, changing everything from individual’s private lives, to the nation’s demographics. A world without contraception and abortion is as appealing a fantasy to the disfranchised white men who voted for Trump as is the return of the days when coal mining was king. It speaks directly to the single largest anxiety of the alt-right. In a BBC interview, an attendee at the November 19 Alt-Right gathering in DC expressed this anxiety as “we’re being replaced, forced to be a minority.” Neither the alt-right, nor the Christian conservatives, are interested in pursuing policies that lead to women being more willing to have children, such as, family leave, affordable childcare, or robust women’s health insurance (not to mention finding ways to make motherhood economically viable). These policies are vehemently opposed by conservatives of all ilks, and the appointment of Representative Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services is sure proof that women’s health care and access to contraception will be scaled back. Planned Parenthood Association of America’s president, Cecile Richards, has expressed alarm at Price’s appointment, claiming it could set women back, “decades,” and deny them access to, “preventative health services.” Beginning with Ronald Reagan, the twentieth century’s last three decades saw an unprecedented unwinding of all regulations governing the behavior of private corporations. Paradoxically, this movement, which continued unabated until the crash of 2008, was mirrored by an equally unprecedented tightening of regulations governing the private behavior of families. In particular, motherhood, judged to begin at conception, is quite possibly the most highly regulated activity on the planet. The religious right doggedly pursues their prolife agenda in virtually every legislature in the country. Ohio’s latest stand is one of a long series designed to erode Roe v. Wade by stealth. They have made great progress, getting an abortion in states like Texas and Indiana is far from straight forward. But up until now, the Supreme Court stood as the last line of defense for women wanting to maintain autonomy over their own reproductive decisions. Trump’s brilliant deal making has made him President of the United States, but for 51 percent of the population, and the majority of Americans who voted in this election, we are just a “heartbeat” away from the most restrictive regulation of private life in a half century.