Gretchen Whitmer called Donald Trump ‘deranged’ for saying women won’t need to think about abortion if he wins.
Watch Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on CNN’s State Of The Union:
Gretchen Whitmer on Trump claiming women will be happy with abortion after he wins, “This guy just doesn’t understand what the average woman is confronting in her life in this country and how could he, he’s not lived a normal life…he’s just deranged.” pic.twitter.com/ekOVaoWvKn
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) September 22, 2024
Jake Tapper: Donald Trump was rallying supporters in North Carolina, Saturday afternoon. I want you to take a listen to what he said would happen if he wins in a few weeks,
Trump in NC tape: Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.
Tapper: He says that’s because it will be back to the States where it belongs. Uh What’s your response?
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: That’s just ludicrous. I think, you know, this guy just doesn’t understand what the average woman is confronting in her life in this country. And how could he, he’s not lived a normal life unlike Kamala Harris who has worked hourly jobs, who knows how important it is that women have health care and access to the medical care that they need. And so, he’s just deranged.
This specific rant of Trump’s has become his new way to cope with the unpopularity of his enabling of the overturning of Roe v Wade. Whitmer is right, there are a lot of problems with his claims, not the least being he clearly doesn’t understand anything about “abortion” or women.
There is sadly no place on earth where women don’t have to think about abortion. That’s like saying people won’t have to worry about eating.
It’s particularly disturbing that Trump started this around the time of the Pro-Publica revelation that the abortion bans Trump brags about were directly responsible for the preventable death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a young mother in Georgia.
“At least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories.”
Additionally, Georgia mother of three Candi Miller died after unintentionally getting pregnant because Georgia’s abortion ban “exceptions” do not account for chronic conditions “even those known to present lethal risks later in pregnancy.” Indeed, Miller’s doctors had warned her that her “health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her.”
But not fragile enough to qualify for an exception under the law.
Trump says everyone wanted abortion to go back to the states. That is patently untrue, but it also means that women in the red states where abortion is banned are not only being denied abortions, but healthcare. The Care Post-Roe Study found increased morbidity and risk of death: “a wide range of harm occurring among pregnant people in states with abortion bans, including increased morbidity, and complications that could result in serious impairment and risk of death. The report notes that longer-term effects could include loss of fertility, chronic pelvic pain due to infection or surgery, or heart attack and stroke related to uncontrolled hypertension, as well as effects on mental health. This has impacted both patients and providers and has deepened the existing inequities in the health care system for people of color.”
So Trump is saying that women in red states will be “happy, healthy, confident and free” as they get sick, lose their fertility, and risk death.
Naturally, the Republican presidential candidate and convicted felon doesn’t say how he will make this magical unicorn world come about, but we can imagine he would cite his “concept of plans” about his healthcare policy after he rips Obamacare away from Americans. This is the part where we mention that “Obamacare” protects pregnant women from having insurance deny them coverage because pregnancy is considered a “pre-existing condition.”
… And also the part where we mention that Obamacare mandated that most private health insurers have to cover women’s preventive health care (women’s wellness checks, mammograms, screenings for cervical cancer, prenatal care, etc.). So how will women be “healthy” under a Trump presidency, when they have to pay for all of those basic screenings again, which means that a lot of women won’t get them?
Trump is basically saying women should just trust him. But he is an adjudicated rapist, a man whom a jury of his peers found liable for sexually assaulting a woman in a department store changing room. This same man’s first wife accused him of violently raping her in her book, a claim she only walked back when he was running for president and suddenly America cared about rape for a minute. Also, by the way, Trump was just prosecuted for an election interference cover-up of his affair with a porn star.
Rapists seek control over women. Trump enabled the overturning of Roe, which means a lot of women can’t get an abortion even when they are raped (many states don’t have exceptions for rape or incest, and those that do too often don’t function like an exception because they require that a woman or girl prove she was raped or molested). Then, many states give rapists visitation rights with their children, so there’s a lifelong connection to a rapist – in other words, abortion bans offer rapists an incentive to rape.
Notice that when anti-abortion people talk about abortion, they don’t work to pass laws to make it easier to prosecute rape and incest (something VP Kamala Harris actually focused on as a prosecutor) or hold men accountable for the costs and work of raising a child? This is the big give-away that anti-abortion talk is anti-women freedom talk.
Abortion care is healthcare. It’s necessary healthcare. It’s life-saving.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
