1). “Idaho Will Enforce Abortion Travel Ban”, Dec 2, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
2). “The Rise of Anti-Abortion Conspiracy Theories”, Dec 3, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
3). “Republicans don't care if women die from abortion bans — but they don't want you to know about it: Women will keep dying, but the GOP is working hard to destroy the evidence”, Dec 2, 2024, Amanda Marcotte, Salon, at < https://www.salon.com/2024/12/
4). “Donald Trump's plan to 'protect' women in action: Two dead, another arrested for miscarriage: Trump's abortion bans keep proving that by "protect," MAGA means they will punish and control”, Nov 1, 2024, Amanda Marcotte, Salon, at < https://www.salon.com/2024/11/
5). “Women Are Getting Sterilized After Donald Trump's Victory: 'Only Option' ”, Nov 30, 2024, Jordan King, Newsweek, at < https://www.newsweek.com/
6). “Donald Trump groped me in what felt like a ‘twisted game’ with Jeffrey Epstein, former model alleges: Stacey Williams says the ex-president, whose spokesperson denied the allegations, touched her in an unwanted sexual way in 1993, after Epstein introduced them”, Oct 23, 2024, Stephanie Kirchgaessner & Lucy Osborne, The Guardian, at < https://www.theguardian.com/
7). “Daddy Issues: The right really loves fantasizing about political retribution via metaphors about spanking children. I hope this has nothing to do with the conservative family model!!”, Oct 28, 2024, Kelly Weill, MomLeft, at < https://www.momleft.com/p/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: In her fine roundup of developments in the fight for Abortion Access and Reproductive Health Care Rights, Jessica Valenti looks at recent events. Both items are overviews of abortion related events in the U.S. but Item 1)., “Idaho Will Enforce ….”, provides a discussion of the issues around the attempts by the far-right to remove the constitional right of free travel from women. A 9th circuit appeals court largely agreed with Idaho's reactionary state government and said it is acceptable to use the coercive power of the state to deprive pregnant women of the ability to leave the notorious Red State to obtain an abortion in another state, where it is legal. Idaho is joined by 4 other states. The reactionary primitives in Idaho are joined by similar operatives in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma who will pass similar legislation in those backward Red States. All this repressive anti-woman legislation is couched in anti-trafficking rhetoric. In Item 2)., “The Rise of Anti-Abortion ….”, Valenti looks at the changing nature of the rhetoric and disinformation used by the Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth movement. Fully aware that an increasing majority of the U.S. population opposes their draconian and cruel policies the Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth movement has to work constantly to present their policies in a way that fools most people.
Item 3)., “Republicans don't care if women die ….”, looks at the ways that Republicans hide the ongoing carnage caused by overturning of Roe v. Wade and the now, well over 1,000 women, who have been tortured and murdered by their movement. The article points out that:
“Anti-abortion leaders know that abortion bans kill women. They don't care. Or worse, many view dying from pregnancy as a good thing. In some cases, it's viewed as just punishment for 'sinful' behavior. Other times, it's romanticized as a noble sacrifice on the altar of maternal duty. But conservatives are aware that this death fetish cuts against their 'pro-life' brand. So there was a lot of empty denials and hand-waving about the inevitable — and expected — outcome of women dying. (Emphasis added)
“We now have another proof point that abortion bans are about misogyny, not 'life,' as the first deaths from red state abortion bans are being reported. Instead of admitting they were wrong and changing course, Republicans are behaving like guilty liars do everywhere, and destroying the evidence. In the process, they are also erasing data needed to save the lives of pregnant women across the board, whether they give birth or not.” (Emphasis added)
In Item 4)., “Donald Trump's plan to 'protect' women in action: ….”, the author notes that:
“In the MAGA parlance, 'protect' is a dog whistle for their true intentions for women: domination. (Emphasis added)
“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.”
How are women responding, one important way is discussed in Item 5)., “Women Are Getting Sterilized ….”, and they are doing it at unprecedented rates filling all available slots for these proceudres at medical facilities around the U.S. The article also discusses the 4-B movement in South Korea and its influence on women in the U.S. I doubt it is a coincidence that S. Korea has a liberal movement strong enough to unseat a would-be tyrant and a women's sexual power movement strong enough to play a role in reducing the female fertility rate from an already low 1.0 to 0.71. Nothing gets the attention of the ruling class like a threat to their supply of cheap labor and cannon fodder.
Item 6)., “Donald Trump groped me ….”, and Item 7)., “Daddy Issues: ….”, both take a look at the weird convoluted world of sexual desire, personal and political power, and other strange aspects of the right wings utterly creepy gender and politilcal power milieu.
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Idaho Will Enforce Abortion Travel Ban
Click to skip ahead: In Travel Ban News, an appeals court is allowing Idaho to enforce most of its so-called ‘abortion trafficking’ law. In Attacks on Democracy, Missouri’s AG is looking to undo Amendment 3. In the States, news from Wyoming, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Minnesota. In Better News, a focus on Colorado and California. In the Nation, Trump’s press secretary is shifting her abortion talking points. Listen Up to a Texas Public Radio podcast episode with an epic lineup. And ICYMI, the new anti-abortion legal strategy in Minnesota.
Travel Ban News
I wish I didn’t have bad news for you on the first day back from a holiday weekend, I’m sorry. An appeals court has ruled that Idaho can enforce most of its anti-abortion travel ban, making it the first state in the nation to do so.
It’s been a minute since we talked about these laws, so here’s a refresher: In 2023, Idaho Republicans passed a so-called “abortion trafficking” law, claiming it would stop adults from taking minors across state lines for abortions without parental permission. In truth, the law criminalizes helping a teenager obtain an abortion in any capacity—anywhere.
The law bans “recruiting, harboring, or transporting” a minor with the purpose of helping them get an abortion—sweeping language that could send someone to prison as a ‘trafficker’ for lending a teen gas money or texting them them url to an abortion clinic.
That’s the point, of course: Republicans want to scare anyone who might help teens access abortion—whether it’s a beloved grandmother or a local abortion fund. As I’ve written so many times before, they’re targeting the helpers.
Initially, a judge blocked the law on First Amendment grounds. (It’s an obvious violation of free speech rights.) But today, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, ruling that Idaho can enforce the ban. At least, most of it.
The good news is that the judges struck down the language around “recruiting,” which was the primary free speech issue:
“‘Recruiting’ has broad contours that overlap extensively with the First Amendment. It sweeps in a large swath of expressive activities—from encouragement, counseling, and emotional support; to education about available medical services and reproductive health care; to public advocacy promoting abortion care and abortion access.”
Wendy Heipt, an attorney for the abortion rights groups who challenged the law, called the ruling “a significant victory for the plaintiffs, as it frees Idahoans to talk with pregnant minors about abortion healthcare.”
Still, the ban on ‘harboring and transporting’ a minor for abortion remains. I’ll have more for you tomorrow on what that means and how the law is likely to be interpreted and enforced. In the meantime, please remember that this is not just about Idaho! Tennessee also has an anti-abortion travel ban that is blocked, and Republicans have introduced similar legislation in Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.
And as you know, this doesn’t stop with teenagers. I wrote at length in my book about how young people are the canaries in the coal mine: what happens to them today comes for us all tomorrow. After all, multiple counties in Texas have already passed travel bans targeting abortion patients of all ages, and Alabama’s Attorney General has made noise about restricting travel for pregnant women.
It continues to baffle me that this is not front page news every single day. If legislators were trying to trap men in states where they couldn’t get healthcare, we would never hear the end of it. I wrote a rant about this last year, if you feel like getting even more pissed off:
Attacks on Democracy
Missouri’s Republican Attorney General is looking for ways to undo the will of the voters, just weeks after Missourians passed an amendment to protect abortion rights in the state constitution.
Andrew Bailey issued an opinion last week arguing that while the ban on abortion will be unenforceable, some restrictions are still legal—including parental consent laws and efforts to ‘protect’ women against coerced abortions. It’s that latter claim I’m most interested in.
As I pointed out on Friday, rhetoric around ‘coerced’ abortion is ramping up; Republicans think they’ll be more able to impose unpopular anti-abortion laws without pushback by framing them as measures to protect vulnerable women and children.
The strategy is nothing new, of course: That’s the same way GOP lawmakers have defended waiting periods, ultrasound mandates and TRAP laws. ‘Coerced abortion’ is just the latest iteration of that tactic.
For example, Bailey says 61% of women who have abortions have been pressured in some way and that clinics routinely coerce women into ending their pregnancies. He’s doing something very specific here: He’s signaling to Missouri Republicans what kind of anti-abortion legislation they should pursue in order to undermine Amendment 3.
We’ve seen in other states what laws around ‘coercion’ might look like: Louisiana legislators used it to advance the law classifying abortion medication as a controlled substance; and Kansas Republicans tried to pass a bill requiring doctors to ask patients invasive questions that were more about shaming women than helping them.
By the way, it should come as no surprise that Bailey is attacking democracy. This is a man who used the power of his office to hold up signature-gathering for Amendment 3, only stopping when forced by the Missouri Supreme Court. He even said he’d refuse to enforce the law if Amendment 3 passed.
So as we see different strategies come out of the Missouri AG’s office, it would do us all well to remember that Bailey told us explicitly that he wouldn’t be protect the will of the voters.
In the States
It was just a few weeks ago that a judge struck down Wyoming’s abortion bans, and Republicans are already trying to overturn the ruling. That said, Wyoming Public Media reports that it could be as long as a year before the legal matter is settled. As the issue makes its way through the courts, remember what we’re watching out for here: Republicans’ argument that abortion isn’t healthcare.
Judge Melissa Owens ruled that Wyoming’s two bans—a general prohibition on abortion and a law specific to abortion medication—violated an amendment in the state constitution that protects people’s right to make their own healthcare decisions. The state had argued that abortion isn’t healthcare because "it’s not restoring the woman’s body from pain, physical disease or sickness,” and we can expect to see them take that same claim to the state Supreme Court.
We’ll also see more of this argument across the country; anti-abortion legislators and activists have been playing down how dangerous pregnancy is, and increasingly trying to divorce abortion from healthcare.
Meanwhile, let’s look at what’s happening in Tennessee. State Sen. Raumesh Akbari has introduced a bill to protect birth control and IVF treatments, saying the legislation will provide “clarity and reassurance” that the issues won’t be impacted by the state’s total abortion ban.
“These are fundamental aspects of reproductive healthcare, and safeguarding them is essential to protecting the well-being of women and families across our state,” she said.
Legislation like this is vital whether or not it passes—because if Tennessee Republicans oppose it, they’re sending voters a clear message that they were never going to stop at abortion. They’ll claim that the state’s ban doesn’t target contraception or IVF so the bill is unnecessary, of course, but it could be a useful PR tool for Democrats.
Telehealth for abortion may be illegal in Wisconsin, but that hasn’t stopped patients from getting abortion medication via shield state providers. Wisconsin Public Radio delved into the latest #WeCount data, which shows that about 130 people a month are having abortion pills shipped to them from pro-choice states. If everyone who gets the pills takes them, the medication will account for a quarter of abortions in the state.
You may remember that abortion was banned in Wisconsin after Roe was overturned. But last summer, a judge ruled that the 1849 law Republicans said banned abortion wasn’t a ban at all—but “a feticide statute only.” That opened the door for abortion providers to resume care, and Republicans have been fighting it out in the courts every since. The case is in front of the state Supreme Court right now.
What’s so interesting about the Wisconsin #WeCount data is that even after clinics resumed providing abortions, the numbers of people getting pills from out-of-state doctors didn’t go down—but went slightly up.
Jenny Higgins, director of the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told WPR, “These telehealth services offer something really important to people, regardless of whether brick and mortar facilities offer care in our state.” Shed points out that in addition to physical distance hurdles, the cost of abortion medication is frequently lower that the cost of procedural abortions, especially when you add in child care, travel, etc.
This is exactly why anti-abortion activists are so keen to go after abortion medication!
Meanwhile, even Americans living in pro-choice states are worried about contraception access. Minnesota Public Radio reports that there’s been an increase in requests for long-acting birth control, sterilizations and vasectomies since Trump won the election.
“People are worried,” says Dr. Sarah Traxler, the chief medical officer with Planned Parenthood North Central States. “There’s a lot of unknown about what’s going to happen with sexual and reproductive health care access across the country.”
The reproductive rights group reports that they’ve seen a 150% increase in appointments for long-acting contraception, and their vasectomy appointments are filled up through January.
Quick hits:
The latest on North Carolina’s legal battle over mifepristone restrictions;
The abortion numbers in Michigan hit a 30 year high;
And how the ACLU is working to strengthen abortion rights in Delaware.
In Better News
Here’s something interesting: California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced two new bills to protect abortion rights, including one designed to shield Californians if the Trump administration tries to enforce the Comstock Act. From Bonta’s office:
“If the federal government tries to ban the mailing and distribution of medication abortion, the Medical Abortion Access bill would shield manufacturers, distributors, authorized healthcare providers, and individuals from civil or criminal liability or professional disciplinary action for accessing, mailing, shipping, receiving, transporting, distributing, or administering medication abortion in California.”
It’s unclear how this would hold up against the Supremacy Clause (which says that federal law trumps state law), but I’m glad to see California Democrats preemptively pick this fight. Bonta says the bill is “a flag we’re planting in the ground.”
The second proposed bill would give Bonta enforcement authority over the Reproductive Privacy Act, allowing him to fine those who violate the law. The Act protects patients’ ability to access abortion care, and Bonta specifically pointed to an incident earlier this year where city officials worked behind the scenes to block an abortion clinic from opening in Beverly Hills.
“California will remain a safe haven for reproductive rights and access to abortion care, no matter who is in the White House," Bonta said.
We also have some good news out of Colorado: Starting in January, private health insurance companies will have to fully cover abortion care. The requirement comes from a law signed by Gov. Jared Polis as part of a 2023 package of abortion rights protections. Insurers will also be required to cover birth control, vasectomies and STI treatment without copays.
Even better: While the law had an exception for insurance policies provided by government employers, that is likely to change now that Colorado voters passed Amendment 79. The pro-choice ballot measure protected abortion rights in the state constitution, and lifted the ban on public funding for abortion. (That might take a few months to implement, repro experts in the state say.)
If you’ve made it this far into the newsletter, you obviously care deeply about abortion rights. Abortion, Every Day relies on readers like you to keep publishing—so please keep that commitment going by signing up for a paid subscription:
In the Nation
Well, I don’t love this development. Last week, I wrote about the evolution of Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt’s response to abortion questions. For a while it was this:
“President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion and has been very clear that he will not sign a federal ban when he is back in the White House.”
Then she dropped the second clause and answered all questions on abortion by responding (word-for-word), “President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion.”
Now it appears that Leavitt has switched it up again—and not for the better. This was her response when USA Today reached out to ask about Trump’s willingness to enact federal abortion legislation:
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”
Now, it’s entirely possible that this means nothing. And we all know that Trump and his team lie about everything, anyway. But given Republicans’ obsession with weaponizing language around abortion (ie, ban vs. ‘minimum national standard’), I’m paying close attention to exactly what they’re saying.
Listen Up
“Texas Matters” at Texas Public Radio has an impressive line-up for their episode on how the state’s ban is hurting women: The podcast spoke to ProPublica’s Kavitha Surana, who has reported on women’s deaths in Texas and Georgia; Washington Post reporter Caroline Kitchener, who broke the news that Texas’ maternal mortality board won’t analyze 2022 and 2023 data; and New Yorker reporter Stephania Taladrid, who wrote last week about the OBGYN exodus out of Texas.
You can listen to them all below:
ICYMI
The Rise of Anti-Abortion Conspiracy Theories
Click to skip ahead: Keep An Eye On the intersection between anti-abortion activism and conspiracy theories. In the States, news from Missouri, Ohio, Arizona, and Illinois. In Travel Ban Updates, more on the Idaho ruling that impacts the whole country. In the Nation, the tension between national and local repro groups. Care Crisis has a glimpse of what it’s been like for doctors in Missouri since Roe was overturned. In the War on Birth Control, why women across the country are asking for long-acting birth control and sterilization.
Keep An Eye On
I know this the last thing any of us need, but I think we should expect a surge in anti-abortion conspiracy theories, especially as Trump takes office. Namely, I’ve noticed an increase in chatter around ‘trafficking,’ and the idea that a huge swath of women who get abortions are actually being trafficked. And while conservatives are using the term in part to distract, they’re also tapping into a fervent (and unstable) online audience.
If you’ve been following my coverage of anti-abortion travel bans, you know that Republicans are calling the legislation ‘anti-trafficking’ or ‘abortion trafficking.’ Anti-abortion activists and lawmakers have also claimed for years that abortion clinics—Planned Parenthood, in particular—aid human traffickers.
In large part, this is a PR move: Republicans are passing wildly unpopular abortion bans and honing in on ‘trafficking’ allows them to pretend they’re protecting women and girls (even as their policies hurt and kill them). It’s also connected to the increase in ‘coerced abortion’ policies that I’ve been writing about.
But there’s something else, too: It’s not a coincidence that conservatives are ramping up ‘trafficking’ rhetoric as TikTok swirls with viral stranger-danger claims about near-trafficking incidents in Target parking lots, and as the QAnon crowd persists with mass-trafficking conspiracies.
They know ‘trafficking’ has become a charged term that drives online engagement and fury. So they’re framing their message for an uninformed, bored, and volatile audience.
And ‘trafficking’ isn’t the only way the anti-abortion lobby is catering to conspiracy theorists. Consider Students for Life’s latest strategy: claiming that the groundwater is poisoned by abortion medication and fetal remains. They even framed the claim as a “Make America Healthy Again” initiative in order to appeal to King Conspiracy RFK Jr, who Trump tapped to be head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
All of which is to say: We’re going to see quite the Venn diagram of anti-abortion/conspiracy theory bullshit over the next few months.
In the States
Now that abortion rights are protected in Arizona’s constitution, pro-choice groups are suing to repeal the state’s 15-week ban. What’s more, Attorney General Kris Mayes has signed documents filed alongside the suit promising that Arizona will not prosecute anyone under the ban until after the case makes its way through the courts. (And likely even after that, since Mayes has made clear she has no interest in pursing abortion-related ‘crimes.’)
As you probably know, Arizona’s ban wasn’t automatically overturned after voters passed Proposition 139—each restriction needs to be repealed one at a time. In this case, the ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), and Planned Parenthood are suing on behalf of local abortion providers to overturn the primary ban. From Dr Eric Reuss, one of the providers behind the suit:
“For two years, physicians’ hands have been tied when a patient needs to end a pregnancy after 15 weeks, including when they face serious pregnancy complications. But today we can once again provide care to people who want to end their pregnancy.”
Arizona’s abortion laws came under national scrutiny when the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of an 1864 abortion ban—a law adopted before women had the right to vote. The backlash was so fierce that some Republicans voted alongside Democrats to repeal the law, lest they face voters’ ire on election day. As you can imagine, that controversy provided a whole lot of support for the pro-choice ballot measure effort.
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Meanwhile, a similar fight is brewing in Missouri, where voters recently passed Amendment 3 to protect abortion rights until ‘viability.’ But Republicans are already working to undermine the will of the voters.
As I noted yesterday, Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey is arguing that some restrictions—like parental consent laws and protections against 'coerced' abortions—remain constitutional. The idea is to implement onerous restrictions under the guise of protecting women.
Meanwhile, with abortion rights now enshrined in Missouri’s constitution, pro-choice advocates have sued to overturn the state’s total abortion ban. In response to the case’s first hearing tomorrow, Republicans gathered outside of various Planned Parenthood clinics today, demanding Amendment 3 be weakened or repealed. Because of course they did.
But that’s not all: Missouri’s Secretary of State has filed a motion to move that hearing to Cole County, where a judge previously struck Amendment 3 from the ballot. And the Missouri Independent reports that Republicans have prefiled at least 11 proposed amendments that would undo Amendment 3. One measure from Rep. Justin Sparks would define personhood as beginning “from the moment of conception,” while another would ban both abortion and gender-affirming care for minors.
Missouri Republicans are far from alone in disregarding the will of the voters. In Ohio, Attorney General Dave Yost is fighting to reinstate a 6-week abortion ban after it was ruled unconstitutional. Thanks to Issue 1’s win last year, a judge overturned the ban—but Yost has appealed, arguing that at least some of the restrictions in the law are still valid.
In better news, Illinois Planned Parenthood clinics are partnering with abortion medication telehealth provider Hey Jane to increase access in the state. The collaboration means that Planned Parenthood patients can use Hey Jane to get abortion medication, and Hey Jane patients who qualify for procedural abortions can go to Planned Parenthood.
In a statement, Hey Jane CEO Kiki Freedman said, “Illinois has long been a haven for reproductive health care, and our hope with this partnership is that we can address the current—and future—influx of abortion-seekers to the state…”
Telehealth has been a vital resource for abortion providers in pro-choice states, who are overwhelmed with patients traveling from states with bans. (Abortion medication means that doctors can focus on those who can only get procedural abortions.)
Quick hits:
MSNBC on how Texas and Georgia are trying to hide their maternal mortality numbers;
A closer look at Michigan’s abortion numbers;
And The San Francisco Chronicle with more on the new abortion rights protections proposed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Travel Ban Updates
Okay, let’s talk more about the Idaho travel ban, which a federal appeals court partially upheld yesterday. To recap: The law criminalizes “recruiting, harboring, or transporting” a minor to help them obtain an abortion. The Ninth Circuit ruled that the state can enforce the 'harboring and transporting' provisions but struck down the 'recruiting' clause, which they found overly broad and a violation of free speech rights.
The travel ban, which Republicans call an ‘abortion trafficking’ law, is an attempt to criminalize anyone who helps teenagers get care. Conservatives claim that the law is meant to stop predatory adults from taking minors out-of-state for abortions, but the language of the legislation is so broad that the state could prosecute someone as trafficker simply for advising a teenager on where to get an abortion.
In this way, the ban isn’t just about travel—it’s an unprecedented attack on free speech.
Here’s the good news: The court’s rejection of the 'recruiting' provision means that those who share information with teens on where and how to get an abortion should be safe from prosecution. And the fact that this happened in a federal court is a big deal! It’s not just good news for Idaho, but for all of us.
The big question now is how Idaho’s Attorney General will interpret 'harboring' and 'transporting.' Could abortion funds that book or raise money for a teen’s bus ticket or hotel be prosecuted?
We’ll find out more as the case moves forward; this ruling only addressed the injunction, not the merits of the challenge itself.
In the meantime, attorney Wendy Heipt, who represented the abortion rights groups challenging the law, emphasizes how important this ruling is. She calls it “the first line in the sand” against states prosecuting people for this type of speech. “It’s a national landscape question,” Heipt says.
After all, we know that multiple states are trying to do exactly what Idaho did. Tennessee passed a similar law that’s currently blocked, and several states proposed near-identical bans targeting teens and speech in the last legislative session. You can bet we’ll see those efforts again soon.
Regardless of what happens next, it’s vital that we keep reminding people what this law really does: traps vulnerable young people in a state where they can’t access reproductive healthcare, forcing them into pregnancy against their wills. Here’s Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman, Idaho director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates:
“We need to call this ban what it is—a minor travel ban made possible by gross government overreach and invasion of privacy that goes against our American democratic principles. AG Labrador’s claim that this ban ‘protects mothers’ is pure hypocrisy…”
In the Nation
The man Trump picked to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is about as bad as it gets. Mother Jones reports that former Florida Congressman David Weldon is seen as an ally by both anti-abortion and anti-vaccine activists. From reporter Julianne McShane:
“[B]oth the anti-abortion site Live Action and the right-wing Daily Signal ran pieces highlighting Weldon’s anti-abortion record, following Trump’s announcement. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told the Daily Signal that Weldon ‘is a proven leader for life, and we look forward to working with him.’”
How fitting. As you know, the CDC tracks abortion data from states—and I’m deeply concerned about the anti-abortion agenda for data collection and tracking. Beyond the state-level attacks we’ve already seen, Project 2025 outlines conservatives’ plan to mandate state reporting of abortion information to the CDC. So I’ll be following this appointment closely.
States Newsroom has a rundown of the anti-abortion Republicans who flipped the U.S. Senate. They’re all frustrating, but the two races that I found particularly obscene were in Ohio and Montana. In Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown was ousted by businessman Bernie Moreno—a man who said that women were “crazy” for caring about abortion, especially those over 50 years-old because, “I don’t think that’s an issue for you.” Tim Sheehy’s win over Sen. Jon Tester in Montana also stung, especially given that Sheehy called young women “indoctrinated” over abortion rights.
Finally, The New Yorker has done a deep dive into the “asymmetry of resources” between well-funded national abortion rights groups and local abortion funds. Essentially, the big national groups are getting the vast majority of the funding—much of which goes towards policy fights—while smaller organizations are struggling to survive.
“Advocacy is what sells, it’s politics, it’s sexy, and you can see it happening in front of your eyes. We are small grassroots teams and our work is not as visible, nor do we have the capacity to go out and find rich people to help us.” -Bree Wallace, Tampa Bay Abortion Fund
That conflict seems to have come to a head around the election, as local activists watched donors give hundreds of millions of dollars to ballot measure fights while they struggled to simply get patients care. Olivia Cappello from Planned Parenthood told The New Yorker, “It is really tough to know that electoral campaigns cost so much money, and that we have to pour so much money to win back rights, little by little, when we also see such a tremendous direct patient need.”
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Republicans don't care if women die from abortion bans — but they don't want you to know about it
After the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights in 2022, there was a robust debate between pro- and anti-choice activists over whether or not banning abortion would kill women. Pro-choicers pointed to evidence, from both history and other countries, showing that abortion bans kill women. Anti-choice activists dismissed the record and pointed to toothless "exceptions" in abortion ban laws as "proof" that women could get abortions to save their lives.
The latter argument was frustrating not just because it was wrong but was generally offered in bad faith. Anti-abortion leaders know that abortion bans kill women. They don't care. Or worse, many view dying from pregnancy as a good thing. In some cases, it's viewed as just punishment for "sinful" behavior. Other times, it's romanticized as a noble sacrifice on the altar of maternal duty. But conservatives are aware that this death fetish cuts against their "pro-life" brand. So there was a lot of empty denials and hand-waving about the inevitable — and expected — outcome of women dying.
We now have another proof point that abortion bans are about misogyny, not "life," as the first deaths from red state abortion bans are being reported. Instead of admitting they were wrong and changing course, Republicans are behaving like guilty liars do everywhere, and destroying the evidence. In the process, they are also erasing data needed to save the lives of pregnant women across the board, whether they give birth or not.
ProPublica has published a series of articles detailing the deaths of women in Georgia and Texas under the two states' draconian abortion bans. They most recently reported the death of Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother of two from Texas. Ngumezi suffered a miscarriage at 11 weeks but was left to bleed to death at the hospital, instead of having the failing pregnancy surgically removed. Multiple doctors in Texas confirmed that hospital staff are often afraid to perform this surgery, however, because it's the same one used in elective abortions. Rather than risk criminal charges, doctors frequently stand by and let women suffer — or die.
Ngumezi's youngest son doesn't fully understand that his mother is dead. ProPublica reported that he chases down women he sees in public who have similar hairstyles, calling for his mother.
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A day after this story was published, the Washington Post reported that the Texas maternal mortality board would skip reviewing the deaths of pregnant women in 2022 and 2023 — conveniently, the first two years after the abortion ban went into place. The leadership claims it's about speeding up the review process, but of course, many members pointed out the main effect is that "they would not be reviewing deaths that may have resulted from delays in care caused by Texas’s abortion bans."
This is especially noteworthy because it's become standard after one of these reports for anti-abortion activists to blame the victims and/or the doctors, and not the bans. Christian right activist Ingrid Skop, for instance, responded to Nguzemi's death by insisting "physicians can intervene to save women’s lives in pregnancy emergencies" under the Texas law. If she really believed that, however, she would desperately want the state maternal mortality board to review this, and other cases like it, so they could come up with recommendations for hospital staff to treat women without running afoul of the law. Strop, however, is on the Texas maternal mortality board. She was likely part of the decision to refuse to look into whether women like Nguzemi might be saved.
This censorship effort doesn't just impact the data about abortion ban-related deaths, either.
So the likeliest explanation is the simple, if brutal one: Anti-abortion activists do not want doctors to save women's lives. The current situation, where doctors are afraid to treat women and have no guidance on how to do so safely, is a status quo they are fighting to preserve. We also know this because, as Jessica Valenti reported at Abortion Every Day last week, these same activists are lobbying to rewrite current abortion bans to remove the paltry "exceptions" that do exist. Instead of allowing doctors to abort pregnancies that are failing, they want to force them to induce labor instead. That is not just cruel but will kill women. We know this because that's exactly how Nguzemi died; her doctor gave her a drug in hopes it would push the pregnancy out, rather than surgically remove it, as is the standard of care.
The Texas decision comes on the heels of a similar move in Georgia, which dismissed the maternal mortality board members to punish them for giving journalists the facts about the deaths of two other women killed by that state's abortion ban. Georgia's only slightly better than Texas, in that they aren't even bothering to pretend this isn't a cover-up. The head of the health department explicitly cited the sharing of information "with outside individuals" as the reason for the board being disbanded.
This censorship effort doesn't just impact the data about abortion ban-related deaths, either. Before 2022, both Texas and Georgia had some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. There's been an eye-popping 56% rise in pregnancy-related deaths in Texas over the past few years. Anyone who actually cared about women or "life" would want to get to the bottom of that. But people like Skop already know what the likely answer will be: Many of these women are dying because they can't get timely abortion care. Some are dying from unsafe abortions. Some are being murdered by partners who are trying to trap them with pregnancy. There's evidence that the overall quality of ob-gyn care in abortion ban states has declined, as doctors flee to legally safer environments. Some will have died, like Nguzemi, after being denied standard miscarriage management care.
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But despite claims to be "pro-life," anti-abortion activists do not care. Instead, they are on Twitter griping about how comprehensive reproductive health care access "promotes sexual promiscuity."
No, seriously, this is their priority while women are dying.
Skop also argued last year that abortion bans are justified because "promiscuous behavior declines." It's tempting to point out that all five women whose deaths have been reported by ProPublica were in long-term relationships or marriages. Three of the five planned to bring their pregnancies to term and died because they were denied miscarriage care. But that's the problem with vague terms like "promiscuous." They draw us into debates about how much women are allowed to enjoy sex before their lives are forfeited. Or how many "good girls" should die to punish the "promiscuous" ones.
That is the trap of misogyny. It allows women like Lila Rose or Ingrid Skop to pretend that, if you submit to the sexist order and obey all their arbitrary rules, you'll be saved. But these laws punish all women and girls: mothers and non-mothers, wives and single women, women who've had 100 partners and those who were virgins when raped. Abortion bans make crystal clear that, to the Christian right, no woman's life is worth saving. Anyone can be sacrificed, to protect their cruel patriarchal order.
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Two dead, another arrested for miscarriage — this is how Trump plans to "protect" women
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.
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."
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.
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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.
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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."
It’s definitely worth reading the whole piece.
Care Crisis
If you want to know what it’s been like for doctors in Missouri these last two years—and why abortion rights protections are so important—check out this profile of maternal fetal medicine specialist Dr. Betsy Wickstrom:
“Ever since [Dobbs], when she enters an ectopic pregnancy diagnosis into the electronic medical record, a large red banner pops up asking if she’s sure the diagnosis is accurate. If the embryo or fetus has a heartbeat, she has to consult an attorney. In the case that the mother is already starting to bleed, Wickstrom said, ‘time is life.’ Sometimes, she has to refer the patient to a provider in Kansas.”
The state even dictates how she can talk to patients about abortion. Wickstrom’s solution? She keeps a water bottle on her desk with a sticker attached that lists national abortion hotlines. Healthcare shouldn’t look like this.
War on Birth Control
If there’s one trend that’s come up again and again since Trump was elected a few weeks ago, it’s the spike in women seeking long-acting birth control and sterilization. Across the country, women don’t trust that access to contraception is safe.
In Kentucky, reproductive health clinics saw a huge jump in requests for long-acting contraceptives after election day. In fact, by November 6th, 26% of their appointments were for long-acting birth control. A nonprofit group in South Carolina reports the same—that demand for long-acting contraception has spiked, especially among young women.
We’re even seeing the trend in pro-choice states: As I reported yesterday, Minnesota’s Planned Parenthood has seen a 150% increase in appointments for long-acting contraception; and in Oregon, Planned Parenthood has seen “a sharp increase in appointments” for IUDs and vasectomies.
The trend is notable enough that Newsweek spoke to five women who have gotten, or plan to get, sterilization procedures in the wake of the presidential election. Naturally, conservative columnists are already up in arms, claiming that women are overreacting.
This comes at the same time that The Hill flags the way that emergency contraception has been pulled into the abortion debate—largely because most Americans don’t know that the morning after pill is different than abortion medication. And as you know if you’ve read my book, anti-abortion activists are using that confusion to their advantage. Their plan is to target birth control by conflating it with abortion.
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Women are getting sterilized after Donald Trump's victory: 'Only option'
It's not a procedure you'd expect a 28-year-old to be planning. But for Lydia Echols from Texas, having her fallopian tubes removed is the price she's willing to pay to ensure her reproductive rights.
Newsweek spoke to five women who have either undergone sterilization procedures or plan to in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump's victory on November 5. They all expressed fear their reproductive choices will be taken from them under Trump's administration.
"If I am to be denied any rights in the next four (or more) years, I will not give them up without a fight," Echols said.
Newsweek has contacted Trump's transition team, via email, for comment.
Last week, a 39-year-old from Washington state, who did not want to be named, underwent a bilateral salpingectomy, in which her fallopian tubes were removed.
"I am not happy that I felt forced into a surgery I did not want to alter my body, I feel like the election tied my hands and forced me to be sterilized—that is horrible," she told Newsweek.
The issue of abortion and reproductive rights was a major one in this year's election. Trump, who took credit for the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, removing the constitutional right to an abortion in the country, has repeatedly said that his position is to let the states decide their own abortion laws.
He has also said he would veto a national abortion ban, writing on Truth Social in October: "I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it, because it is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters (the will of the people!)"
But this has not quelled the fears of multiple women who, on top of being worried about access to abortion, are also concerned about whether the availability of birth control will be impacted.
The woman from Washington has not told those close to her that she has been sterilized. Since she was a child, she has known she does not want children.
She and her husband, who had a vasectomy in 2021, both felt that they had experienced too much trauma as children themselves to be the parents they wanted to be. She has also struggled with multiple health issues, including polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which made pregnancy risky for her.
But "neither of us wanted to subject me to an unnecessary surgery or jeopardize my health."
"I paid way too much attention to the vitriol Trump repeatedly spit during his previous term," she added, "and am keenly aware of the people he keeps around him and in his ear, who all seem to see women as incubators and possessions to subjugate."
The woman scheduled a sterilization appointment in October, "fully planning to cancel the surgery the day after the election, assuming Kamala won."
"With Trump's victory, we quickly learned that my choice to cancel the surgery had been taken from me," she said. "We both believed that I had no choice but to proceed to ensure that I can protect my health should I be assaulted during a Trump presidency, should my husband's vasectomy fail and/or should my hormonal birth control become inaccessible."
She added: "This isn't a wanted procedure, but one of necessity due to the politics and subjugation coming our way."
'This is the Time to Prepare and Be Prudent'
Echols said she had "been wanting to be child-free for a very long time" and is planning to get a bilateral salpingectomy with an endometrial ablation—when the lining of the uterus is destroyed. Her doctor approved the procedures earlier this month.
"The next four years will go in the way of the Christian nationalists if what I have seen and heard and experienced is to be believed," she said. "Anyone who has...taken a look at the social tirade Donald Trump encouraged and employed during his years in the office knows that this is the time to prepare and be prudent for what could yet come."
"I'd rather be safe than sorry," she added.
The former teacher also said she wished she could "give [her] fertility to someone who desperately wanted to have children."
"I am sad that I cannot take away the pain of infertility of another person who desires to have children," she said.
'This Feels Like the Only Option'
Morgan Wood, 24, who lives in Georgia, and has also never wanted children, had considered sterilization for the serious gynecologic issues she has struggled with since middle school.
Her experience with medical professionals for these issues left her with "a pretty deep distrust of doctors" and "weary about the prospect of health care throughout a pregnancy."
"I felt pretty certain that my body could not handle a pregnancy, even if I did have some huge change of mind and want kids, and after these experiences," Wood said.
Up until Trump's victory, Wood had thought she would deal with the question of whether to get sterilized when she was older. She thought she would start asking doctors about sterilization when she turns 27, when it will be time to get her intrauterine device (IUD) removed.
But, after November 5, she said it became a "now" issue and has set up a consultation for December 5.
"I have no idea what Trump will and won't follow through on," Wood said, "I was already upset when Roe v Wade was overturned. Living in the South, our prospects for protections and resources aren't great if they aren't otherwise ensured."
She said: "But talks of complicating the birth control and abortion access processes even further made this feel like the only option. I need everything handled, and ideally before power begins shifting."
'I Refuse to Be Denied Medical Care'
Ashley Hedden, 36, who is asexual (she does not experience sexual attraction) is worried about sexual assault and medical care for pregnant women.
"The only way I would get pregnant is if I were raped, and I refuse to be forced to carry the result of a man's violence against my will," she said.
Hedden, who lived in Kentucky, went on: "I have seen that this country will not protect people that can get pregnant, and have seen the reports of the deaths of pregnant women that were refused medical care. I refuse to be a person that ends up not being able to get medical care just because I own a uterus with some cells growing in it."
She was referring to several women who have died while pregnant in states where abortion laws restrict when doctors can intervene.
In September, Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, was named the first "preventable" abortion death, when investigative journalism site ProPublica reported that Thurman experienced a rare complication after taking abortion pills and died during emergency surgery in August 2022.
Georgia's law banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, labeled the LIFE Act, took effect on July 20, 2022. Thurman had passed that mark when she discovered she was pregnant, records shared with ProPublica showed.
The new law also made performing a dilation and curettage (D&C), a procedure to remove tissue from the uterus following an abortion or miscarriage, a felony offense with medical exceptions.
Georgia's maternal mortality review committee, which includes 10 doctors, concluded that there was a "good chance" that Thurman's death could likely have been prevented if the D&C had been provided earlier.
'I Am Choosing Me'
Eden Ixora, 25, who lives in Florida, is also worried about sexual assault. She made a "firm decision" last month that she will get a bilateral salpingectomy.
"All the political noise is what really finalized my decision for me," she said. "It wasn't just Trump winning but rather all the online rhetoric that followed."
She cited nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes' viral clip, telling women "your body, my choice" and the "jokes" about it as an example of this.
Newsweek has contacted Fuentes, who has said the comment was "sort of a joke" and a critique of the pro-choice movement and modern feminism, via direct message on X, for comment.
"For me it was a call to action," Ixora said. "A need to get this locked in so I don't have to live in fear that at any moment some random guy can completely destroy my life. For me the idea of getting pregnant is worse than death. I'm doing what I can to protect my right to choose. I am choosing me."
What About Trump's Assurances?
Trump has repeatedly denied that he would bring in a national abortion ban and he has explicitly distanced himself from Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation's 922-page document outlining how a potential Republican administration could overhaul the federal government, which includes limiting access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
But the five women who spoke to Newsweek are not convinced.
"Trump lied through his teeth repeatedly and consistently through his previous term," the woman from Washington said. "There is so much documentation of him saying one thing then doing another."
Both she and Echols pointed out that since Trump's victory, he has appointed people with links to Project 2025, including Brendan Carr, who has been tapped to lead the Federal Communications Commission, and John Ratcliffe, who Trump has nominated CIA director.
"I am no fool," Echols said. "The men behind [Trump] will push for whatever they think is right and will lube Trump's ears with what he so desperately craves in return—power and attention. I do not trust a word that man says, but I know the men (and women) behind him will stay true to their word."
Wood said: "I generally don't trust politicians, but I especially don't trust Trump. He is notoriously bad at keeping his story straight."
Similarly, Hedden said: "I do not think Trump has an honest bone in his body. I have seen enough of Donald that I understand he says whatever he needs to say in the moment."
Meanwhile, Ixora said she is not worried about "one specific proposal" but "the overall societal temperature and the fact that we as a group have even allowed it to get this far where women's reproductive choices are not considered rights."
Newsweek has put all these comments to Trump's team for a response.
4B Movement
Since the election result, thousands of people on TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter, have been posting about participating in the 4B movement, a feminist protest movement that originated in South Korea in the mid-2010s.
The 4B movement stipulates four "nos": no sex with men, no giving birth, no dating men and no marriage with men. The words for the terms in Korean all begin with the prefix "bi," which means "no," as reported by Bustle.
Sex strikes, a form of protest more widespread than the 4B movement, have taken place in countries around the world over the years, including Colombia, Kenya, Liberia, Italy, the Philippines, South Sudan and Togo.
Another way some women responded to Trump's victory was to boycott Thanksgiving with family members who voted Republican.
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Donald Trump groped me in what felt like a ‘twisted game’ with Jeffrey Epstein, former model alleges
Stacey Williams says the ex-president, whose spokesperson denied the allegations, touched her in an unwanted sexual way in 1993, after Epstein introduced them
A former model who says she met Donald Trump through the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein has accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower in 1993, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.
Stacey Williams, who worked as a professional model in the 1990s, said she first met Trump in 1992 at a Christmas party after being introduced to him by Epstein, who she believed was a good friend of the then New York real estate developer. Williams said Epstein was interested in her and the two casually dated for a period of a few months.
“It became very clear then that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,” Williams said.
The alleged groping occurred some months later, in the late winter or early spring of 1993, when Epstein suggested during a walk they were on that he and Williams stop by to visit Trump at Trump Tower. Epstein was later convicted on sex offenses and killed himself in prison in 2019.
Moments after they arrived, she alleges, Trump greeted Williams, pulled her toward him and started groping her. She said he put his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her waist and her buttocks. She said she froze because she was “deeply confused” about what was happening. At the same time, she said she believed she saw the two men smiling at each other.
Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary for Donald Trump’s campaign, provided a statement denying the allegations, which said in part: “These accusations, made by a former activist for Barack Obama and announced on a Harris campaign call two weeks before the election, are unequivocally false. It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign.”
Williams says that Trump sent her agent a postcard via courier later in 1993, an aerial view of Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach residence and resort. She shared it with the Guardian. In his handwriting – using what appears to be his usual black Sharpie – he wrote: “Stacey – Your home away from home. Love Donald”.
Williams, who is 56 and a native of Pennsylvania, has shared parts of her allegation on social media posts in the past, but revealed details about the alleged encounter on a call on Monday organized by a group called Survivors for Kamala, which supports Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. The Zoom call featured actor Ashley Judd and law professor and academic Anita Hill, among others. Survivors for Kamala also took out an ad in the New York Times this week, signed by 200 survivors of sexual and gender violence, which was meant to serve as a reminder that Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse in a court.
After the alleged incident, Williams said that she and Epstein left Trump Tower, and that she began to feel Epstein growing angry at her.
“Jeffrey and I left and he didn’t look at me or speak to me and I felt this seething rage around me, and when we got down to the sidewalk, he looked at me and just berated me, and said: ‘Why did you let him do that?’” she said on the Zoom call.
“He made me feel so disgusting and I remember being so utterly confused,” she said.
She described how the alleged incident seemed to her to be part of a “twisted game”.
“I felt shame and disgust and as we went our separate ways, I felt this sensation of revisiting it, while the hands were all over me. And I had this horrible pit in my stomach that it was somehow orchestrated. I felt like a piece of meat,” she said in an interview with the Guardian.
She and Epstein parted ways soon after. Williams said she never had any knowledge of his pattern of sexual abuse, which would later become known. Epstein is now considered one of the worst and most prolific pedophiles in modern history.
The allegation of groping and unwanted sexual touching follows a well-documented pattern of behavior by Trump.
About two dozen women have accused the former president, who has been convicted of multiple felonies, of sexual misconduct dating back decades. The allegations have included claims of Trump kissing them without their consent, reaching under their skirts, and, in the case of some beauty pageant contestants, walking in on them in the changing room.
A former model named Amy Dorris shared allegations about Trump similar to what Williams described in an interview with the Guardian in 2020. Trump denied ever having harassed, abused or behaved improperly toward Dorris.
Last year, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing the columnist E Jean Carroll in 1996 and awarded her $5m in a judgment.
Williams’ allegations raise new questions about Trump’s relationship with Epstein.
No evidence has surfaced that Trump was aware of or involved in Epstein’s misconduct.
But Trump and Epstein knew each other for decades and were photographed at the same social events in the 1990s and early 2000s, years before Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to state charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
After Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, Trump told journalists in the Oval Office that he “knew him, like everybody in Palm Beach knew him” but that he had a “falling out” with Epstein in the early 2000s.
“I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years,” Trump said. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”
Asked whether she had considered coming forward in the past, as other women were making allegations against Trump, Williams said she was a person who wanted to avoid negative attention or risk the backlash many other survivors have faced.
“I left the business,” she said. “I disappeared on purpose because I love being anonymous and I love my life of being a private citizen. Then I watched what has happened to women who come out and it is so horrifying and abusive. The thought of doing that, especially as a mother with a child in my house, was just not possible,” she told the Guardian.
“I just chose in my own way – comments on social media to contradict people who said he didn’t do anything,” she said.
Like other survivors, she said, she has processed what happened to her and became more confident about facing an angry backlash, she said.
Williams spoke about the allegations to at least two friends who spoke to the Guardian. One friend, who asked not to be named, said Williams told her about the alleged incident in 2005 or 2006 during a conversation in which Williams mentioned knowing Epstein, and how he had introduced her to Trump. The friend specifically remembers Williams telling her that she had been groped by Trump. Epstein was not a household name at the time, but the friend would later recall the anecdote when the Epstein scandal erupted.
“What I recall is that it was groping … what we would call feeling someone up,” the friend said.
Ally Gutwillinger, another longtime friend, said Williams told her about the alleged incident in 2015. Gutwillinger remembers the timing because Trump had announced that he was running for president.
“I went to her house sometime in that week and I saw a postcard of Mar-a-Lago and I said: ‘What’s this?’ and she said ‘Turn it over,’” Gutwillinger said. “She said something like: ‘He’s vile, he groped me in Trump Tower.’”
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Daddy Issues
At a campaign rally for Donald Trump last week, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson foretold vengeance against the left via an extended metaphor about a father spanking a teenage girl.
“If you allow your hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter to slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger, you’re going to get more of it,” Carlson told the crowd.
“There has to be a point at which dad comes home. Dad comes home and he’s pissed. He’s not vengeful, he loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them. Because they’re his children, they live in his house. But he’s very disappointed in them and he’s gonna let them know … And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl, and it has to be this way.’”
When Trump took the stage afterward, the crowd chanted “daddy’s home” and “daddy Don.”
When Democrats call the right “weird,” this is the kind of thing they’re talking about. While Republican candidates like Trump campaign on the pretext of protecting children from sexualization by forces outside the family (and by “sexualization,” they usually mean encountering anything to do with LGBTQ+ life), a sizable percentage regard the family as a sexualized project of male domination. Trump and Carlson, both of whom have made sexual remarks about underage girls and their own daughters, typify this trend.
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It’s a little tired at this point to note that Trump is gross about girls. During the 2016 election, reporters surfaced clips of Trump speaking to a young girl and remarking that “I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”
Of his own daughter, Trump has claimed that “I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” That’s in addition to Trump’s mountain of substantiated sexual misconduct allegations by adult women with whom he has no relation.
But it’s only tired because those allegations and on-record offenses have been public for decades, with little effect on Trump’s career. Carlson, too, kept his Fox News gig in 2019 when Media Matters rediscovered old radio programs in which Carlson downplayed statutory rape within religious marriages, and made lewd comments about underage girls experimenting sexually at his daughter’s boarding.
“If it weren't my daughter I would love that scenario,” Carlson said.
Conservative men can often weather these indiscretions because patriarchal politics allow (even require) a certain degradation of women and girls. Within the wealthy circles that Trump frequented as a real estate developer, the ability to degrade women can even serve as a marker of status between men. Just last week, a former model came forward to disclose that Donald Trump had groped her in front of influential pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 1993, in what she described as a “twisted game” between two men who “were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together.”
The right’s vision of “family values” doesn’t undercut this abuse. It formalizes it through insistence on male headship over women and children who are regarded, to varying degrees, as property. Just look at how Carlson describes the varying acceptability of sexual abuse within and without families.
In a 2006 talk radio appearance, Carlson condemned felony rape charges against cult leader Warren Jeffs, who had forced children into marriage with Jeffs’ adult male followers.
“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 bullshit,” Carlson said.
At the time of Carlson’s remarks, Jeffs had already been sued by his nephew, who said he was five or six years old when Jeffs raped him. The criminal charges that Carlson called “bullshit” stemmed from the case of a 14-year-old girl, whom Jeffs had forced into marriage with an adult cousin. The girl testified that her husband frequently raped her, and that she survived multiple miscarriages.
Jeffs was later found to have raped a pre-teen girl he forced into marriage. Even after this revelation, however, Carlson continued to defend Jeffs on the grounds that violence within the home was different than at the hands of strangers.
“I am not defending underage marriage at all. I just don't think it's the same thing exactly as pulling a child from a bus stop and sexually assaulting that child,” Carlson said on a 2009 talk radio program, adding that “the rapist, in this case, has made a lifelong commitment to live and take care of the person, so it is a little different. I mean, let's be honest about it.”
He also deployed similar language about supposed differences between the rape of a sex worker and the rape of a housewife. “It's a little more complicated than if some, you know, housewife claims she was pulled off the street and raped. It's just not the same thing,” he said in 2006.
Carlson’s comments offer a neat encapsulation of the right-wing program as it seeks to categorize family as the property of men. Carlson describes a dangerous public sphere in which women and children can be spirited off the streets by strangers, and in which women who live outside the traditional family order are low-key asking for assault. To complement this supposedly dangerous public realm, the right valorizes the male-led household as a site of protection against the corrupting influence of the outside world.
Within this matrix, sexual assault is reframed as an offense to father figures, and described in terms of theft; of property crime. And if there’s any doubt that Carlson regards wives as akin to property, here’s what he said in 2008 about a Republican political candidate who described his “trophy wife” as his favorite possession:
“Anybody who answers ‘my trophy wife is my favorite possession’ is my hero,” Carlson said. “I don't give a shit. I'm voting for the guy.”
This system allows for all manner of abuse against women and children within the home, from “duty sex” and marital rape of wives, to corporal punishment of children. As Carlson’s creepy spanking comments suggest, the latter often straddles the line between physical and sexual abuse.
In her new book Wild Faith (excerpted this month in New York Magazine), journalist Talia Lavin interviews adults who experienced childhood spankings as sexual abuse. Multiple women, many of them raised in Evangelical cultures with a strong emphasis on modesty, recalled being made to strip in front of their fathers for spankings. Some said the experiences led to sexual trauma that has endured into their adulthoods.
“Afterwards, once he’d calmed down, he had me lay on my tummy on my bed and exposed my bare ass and spread ointment on the bruised and bloody skin,” one woman said of a beating by her father. “I couldn’t sit in a chair for some time, but the revulsion of him touching my bare ass when I was 11 or 12 years old stayed with me far longer.”
Even if parents claim spankings are unrelated to sexual domination, the adult children interviewed in Wild Faith and Harvard researchers who studied the neurological effects of spanking agreed that spanking children elicits responses similar to those produced by sexual assault.
“You see the same reactions in the brain,” a Harvard researcher said of the findings of a 2021 study on spanking. “Those consequences potentially affect the brain in areas often engaged in emotional regulation and threat detection, so that children can respond quickly to threats in the environment.”
Again, Carlson’s past remarks are clarifying, because he repeatedly invokes spanking as a sexualized punishment for adults. When describing Martha Stewart’s daughter as “cunty” (derogatory) Carlson commented in 2006 that “I just wanted to give her the spanking she so desperately needs.” And when describing a debate victory against an adult man, Carlson declared in 2006 that “I spanked Michael Moore like a bad little girl.”
A significant number of adult men want to assault and humiliate women and girls. It’s not a secret. It’s not a phenomenon that takes place underground, in shadowy cabals, as right-wing sex panics like QAnon falsely allege. It’s a fantasy that they feel comfortable describing at a televised rally. It’s an entire ordering theory of politics for these men. And when they want to threaten violent repression of their political enemies, they point to this scene of acceptable violence: they envision a father spanking a teenage girl.
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