Trump escalates the war on women - By Katrina van den Heuvel
By Katrina van den Heuvel May 23 at 8:02 AM
“I just want to state some facts,” Deja Foxx, a 16-year-old activist, told Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) at a town hall meeting in April. “I’m a young woman, and you’re a middle-aged man. I’m a person of color, and you’re white. I come from a background of poverty, and I didn’t always have parents to guide me through life. You come from privilege, so I’m wondering, as a Planned Parenthood patient and someone who relies on Title X, who you are clearly not, why it’s your right to take away my right to choose Planned Parenthood.”
The confrontation, which went viral, occurred on the same day that President Trump signed a law allowing states to deny Title X family planning funds to health clinics that offer abortions. Flake supported the bill, along with 49 other Senate Republicans. With two Republican women breaking ranks, Vice President Pence cast the tiebreaking vote to force the bill through. As Foxx explained to Flake, the care she receives at Planned Parenthood is helping her take charge of her future and achieve the American dream. “I can’t sit idly by while women like me are countlessly and constantly being ignored on Capitol Hill,” she said in an interview after the exchange.
The Title X measure is just one of many unnerving examples of women having their interests ignored — or, worse, threatened — in Washington. While much of the media and political establishment are gripped by the scandals engulfing the administration, Trump and the Republican Party have been waging war on the health of women everywhere.
The latest attack came last Monday, when the Trump administration marked the beginning of National Women’s Health Week by announcing an unprecedented expansion of the “global gag rule,” which Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan have used to withhold U.S. funding from health organizations that provide abortions or even acknowledge the procedure as an option. The last time it was in effect, under George W. Bush, the policy restricted roughly $600 million in international family planning assistance. Trump is broadening it to include global health funding provided by the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Defense Department, totaling $8.8 billion. The expanded ban will cause an increase in unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths. “Despite the Trump administration’s ludicrous rebranding of the policy,” says Suzanne Ehlers, president of the global reproductive health advocacy group PAI, “the Global Gag Rule is unmistakably deadlier than ever.”
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