WHAT IF Trump IS ELECTED—- Part II
WOMENS’ RIGHTS
HERE’S WHAT’S COMING
The new administration has sailed into office avoiding the issue of women’s rights by saying that in democratic America we will leave women’s’ rights up to the people, namely to each state. The Trump team seems to forget that under Roe V. Wade it was a federal matter for fifty years and further that the state legislatures, because of many years of gerrymandering fostered and paid for by extreme conservative groups within the Republican party and supervised by Mr. Carl Rove, have wrested control of the state legislatures from most of the American people. Currently, twenty-seven states have restrictive abortion laws. Abortion is almost completely banned in fourteen other states, yet the right to have an abortion is extremely popular and over sixty percent of those polled believe that women should have control of their own bodies and have the right to an abortion.
Don’t bet on politician’s promises. Abortion will not be left to the states so that if you were able to travel to California or New York you could consult with a physician and get an abortion. President Trump will surely have a federal law passed to satisfy his political base, which will recognize embryos as people and all abortions whether or not they result from rape, incest or threaten the health of the woman will be murder, a crime punishable by up to life in prison. Attempting an abortion or leaving the country to obtain an abortion will be a major crime. Damaging or destroying an embryo will be a significant crime. Consulting with anyone to discuss an abortion will be a conspiracy to commit murder.
All contraception including the “pill”, condoms, and all other antipregnancy devices or medicines will be banned as being against the “Natural Order” and against “God’s Will”. Under the new federal law all women who die because of their pregnancies, which will be a throwback to the 1800’s, will be guaranteed a “special place” in heaven. Any person who protests or files a lawsuit contesting these policies will be considered “unamerican” under the new law and will be punished. Who is going to determine “God’s Will”? Narrow minded, prejudiced, mean old Men who fly the American flag upside down over their homes and accept lavish gifts from wealthy supporters.
You don’t need a lecture on the history of American women’ rights. Women have been determined to be possessions and a slave master was allowed to rape his women slaves. A woman was not allowed to own real estate without her husband’s permission. In 1870 although the 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote, women were disenfranchised. In 1875 the Supreme Court ruled that women couldn’t even practice law. It wasn’t until 1920 that women got the right to vote under the 19th amendment.
If reelected, would President Trump and his cronies on the Supreme Court do all of this? They most certainly will, justifying it by claiming that we will need more children to be trained in manual skills to replace the workers who age, die, or become disabled. These replacements will be white, protestant and real Americans. It’s the “Replacement Theory”, which fears that hard working “white” Americans will be replaced by brown and black foreign immigrants. Bear in mind that the president will have little sympathy for the state of womanhood after the multiple times he has been accused of and sued for rape, molestation and slander by many women and has been compelled to pay such large sums of money for his improper sexual acts or statements to offended women and has bragged and admitted to gross improper body contacts with them. No, he is not a feminist!
As awful as it sounds, the abortion rights issue is not the entire story. The Trump crowd wants to go back to an earlier, simpler time like the 50’s. The T.V. shows of that era show us what it was like for women. Let’s look at some of them like “Mayberry”, “Father Knows Best”, and “Leave it to Beaver”, where Ward Cleaver wore a grey flannel suit and a Knox hat with a snap brim when he went to work and the women stayed at home cooking, cleaning, and looking after the children and were called “homemakers”. Women weren’t doctors. They were nurses. They taught in elementary schools and worked as salesladies and waitresses. Women weren’t judges or even practicing lawyers, they were legal secretaries. They were pretty much banned from the corporate world. What pay they received was far less than men were paid for doing the same job, often not as well. Pull up some episodes of those 50’s classic T.V. shows. How many black women appear in the entire series of “Mayberry” or in any of them? Why? Because black people were second class citizens and didn’t really count in our society of the 50’s. Even the military had been segregated and women were basically only allowed to perform supportive roles in a clerical capacity.
My Jewish friends should be aware that the Jews weren’t treated so nicely in the 50’s. Jews were not welcome in the country club or at many resorts or in the executive suites of the major corporations or in excusive residential developments. One hotel in Miami Beach had a sign: “Good News…Great Views…No Jews!”. While you’re nostalgically looking at “Mayberry”, pull up the movie, “Gentleman’s Agreement” which won three Oscars in 1948 and learn that the surprise was that even the good people, the nice people, were antisemitic.
It’s like trying to say that things were better four years ago, under President Trump when a million people died from Covid and the schools and everything else were closed and the morgues were overflowing and the President and his staff were saying that the problem would go away on its own, discouraging vaccinations and endorsing quack medications like drinking Clorox. We tend to block that out, but we shouldn’t.
You really don’t want to lose the rights that women have fought for and achieved! What rights are you talking about? Well, for example the divorce laws were changed. Divorce became “no fault “instead of having to prove adultery and the children are now generally awarded to the wife rather than being given to the husband. The NOW movement sprang up. (National Organization for Women). Laws granting equal employment rights to women, maternity leave, childcare centers, and tax deductibility for them. The law now provided for equal unsegregated education (no more exclusively male colleges). Title IX of the Higher Education Act created sports equality with the men. A major change was the greater access to contraception and abortion.
In the military where women have served for over 200 years, there are enormous changes. Although over one thousand women served in combat roles, disguising themselves as men, starting with the Revolutionary War, they were always generally limited to supportive functions. During World War II over 350,000 women served in the military. They were nurses, typists, and repair persons. Some flew, shuttling planes from the factories to the combat areas. In 1994 President Clinton permitted women to serve in ALL positions including combat pilots and in 2013 women were allowed in ground combat units. A woman won the Silver Star medal for ground combat in the Iraq war.
What about the business world? Before 1960 how many women served as C.E.O. of a major corporation? Answer: NONE! It wasn’t until 1972 that Katherine Graham became the first C.E.O. of a Fortune 500 company. (The Washington Post—which her family may have owned) Even now there were few if any women executives in the insurance industry and women compose only 8.2 percent of the top places in the Fortune 500 group, yet they perform better than men.
Almost all the major advances that women have achieved were accomplished with the help of democratic presidents and Congresses. In 1948 Democrat President Truman desegregated the military. In 1964 President Kennedy, a democrat, signed the Equal Pay Act. In 1994 President Clinton, a democrat, removed the restrictions on women in the military. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Higher Education Act. It’s very difficult to find any Republican President who supported and improved women’s rights The Biden democrats endorse and respect and encourage women’s rights. They support a woman’s right to control her own body. They support Rowe v, Wade! Mr. Trump and his right-wing followers have never supported women’s rights. They packed the Supreme Court to damage women’s rights and were able to reverse Rowe v. Wade although there was no change in facts or law or in the nation’s morality to justify the Court’s ruling which appears to be solely political, and which will destroy the right of women to control their own bodies. Again, over sixty percent of Americans support Rowe v. Wade and a women’s right to have an abortion.
If you plan to vote for Trump, you should think twice about surrendering your daughters’ and granddaughters’ rights. These are the rights that women fought hard to achieve. Think hard…” Is this what I want to happen?” Why vote to go back to a “simpler time “… of antifeminism, ignorance, prejudice, and hate? WAKE UP!
So, there you have it. If Trump wins, as they say at Toyota…” YOU ASKED FOR IT…. You got it.”
GOD BLESS OUR WAR HEROES AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!