Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump gestures on the day of a town-hall event in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on August 29. During this speech, Trump promised to make IVF free but offered no further details.
Photo: Vincent Alban/Reuters
Last month, Donald Trump tried to reassure American women. “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” he wrote on Truth Social, his social-media site. Hours earlier, he’d falsely claimed again that “everyone” wanted to see Roe v. Wade “terminated.” Confused? Don’t be. Trump is saying whatever he thinks the public wants to hear — even though he’s often lying. Most people did not want Roe “terminated” and a second Trump administration would in fact not be great for women, let alone their reproductive rights. He has said he won’t sign a national abortion ban, but he’s not a trustworthy source.
The former president may be dimly aware that his party’s abortion stance is unpopular with the general public, but since he has no basic convictions and does whatever he thinks his base wants, he appears more like a weather vane than a crusader. On August 29, nearly a week after his Truth Social post, he said that his administration would be “paying for that treatment,” referring to IVF. “We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay,” he added. Trump’s seeming variability irks some abortion opponents, including Lila Rose of Live Action. “The recent statements that they have been making — increasingly pro-abortion statements — and the positions that they are choosing to take are making it untenable for pro-life voters to get out the vote for them,” the activist told Politico last month.
When Trump implied that Florida’s six-week abortion ban was “too short” in an interview, Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America issued a critical statement — only to walk it back minutes later. Dannenfelser said she’d spoken with Trump, who assured her he was “uncommitted” on a ballot initiative that would expand abortion access in the state. “President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” Karoline Leavitt, a Trump spokesperson, said in a statement. That might not mollify some abortion opponents. In truth, though, they have nothing to fear from Trump.
Trump is still the leader of the Republican Party, and the party platform — which his allies directly shaped — supports legal personhood for fetuses under the Fourteenth Amendment. If enshrined in law, fetal personhood would ban abortion. He also selected J.D. Vance as his running mate, and Vance has expressed support for a national abortion ban in the past. Vance’s fertility obsession is well-established by now, as is his disdain for childless people and working women. As Trump made empty promises about IVF last month, Vance was under fire yet again, this time for old remarks about Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers. “If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone,” Vance said in a 2021 appearance. (Weingarten has described herself as a “mother by marriage.”)
While Vance covers himself in dubious glory, Trump explores the manosphere or “manoverse,” as one recent New York Times piece called it. “At a time of an immense gender gap in politics among young people — women leaning left, men leaning right — the Trump campaign has been aggressively courting what might be called the bro vote, the frat-boy flank,” the Times reported, and the frat boys are responding in kind. The Trump campaign flirts with the Nelk Boys of YouTube and podcasting fame; Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC; Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports; the podcaster Theo Von; and streamer Adin Ross. None are known for their feminism, but two stand out. Last year, a video emerged showing White striking his wife. Insider has reported that Portnoy had “violent and humiliating” sex with women and filmed them during intercourse without their consent. Portnoy denied the allegations and sued the outlet for defamation, but a judge tossed the case and Portnoy withdrew his appeal last year.
There are plenty of women — mainly white women — who will vote for Trump no matter what he says about abortion or which misogynistic figures his campaign might court. Nevertheless, he knows that bros, or anyone else who considers women useful principally for sex or reproduction, are a natural constituency for his campaign. For that reason, abortion opponents still have significant common cause with Trump. The idea that women are vessels for the fetus rather than full human beings with a right to their own bodily autonomy fits in neatly with the Trump campaign’s overtures to the manoverse. As long as Trump boasts of destroying Roe, and of sending abortion “back to the states,” he remains a champion of the anti-abortion movement. Saying “reproductive rights” in one Truth Social post is not proof by itself that Trump will betray the allies who helped put him into power. It’s an act, designed to fool the gullible, and it very likely won’t work.
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