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Trump 2.0: Anti-abortion, anti-democratic and far right [1]

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Date: 2025-01

With Trump 2.0, the US enters a new era – one where people’s rights, particularly those of women and girls, LGBTQIA+ people, Black or brown people, or immigrants, are ignored, or worse, violated. Climate change is not a concern. Disinformation is rampant. Reproductive freedom, particularly the access to abortion, is radically curtailed, despite broad voter support.

Most of us are familiar with (and frankly, are already experiencing) the Project 2025 playbook, which calls for dismantling democratic norms in the US, unitary executive power, harsh Christian nationalism, a punitive approach to foreign assistance and multilateralism, and violations of human rights. We're hurtling into a dark period. Get out your flashlights.

During Trump’s first term, we saw his extreme, anti-democratic, anti-abortion ideology in action. He stacked the courts with far-right judges, particularly the Supreme Court, which paved the way for overturning Roe v. Wade. With that decision, the Court set the US back nearly half a century, and the effects rippled across the globe.

In 2022, for example, the Kenyan courts halted momentum to protect abortion rights, citing Roe’s weakened precedent. My colleagues in Ethiopia saw anti-abortion activists, emboldened by the fall of Roe, spark a public outcry against the 2005 liberalized abortion law. Similarly, in India, groups protested in the streets of Delhi, calling for the 1971 law allowing abortion to be repealed. And in Nigeria, the governor of the state of Lagos revoked policy guidance about abortion care for life-threatening health conditions.

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The evidence is clear, and I have seen in my work with Ipas, a global reproductive justice organisation, when abortion is legally restricted, when care is denied or delayed, it’s both a public health and human rights concern. A simple, safe medical procedure becomes risky. Thirty-five million unsafe abortions happen each year and tens of thousands of women die or are gravely injured. According to the World Health Organisation, the proportion of unsafe abortions is higher in countries with severe restrictions than those with less restrictive laws.

Let’s be clear, when abortion is criminalised, people live in fear and confusion about the law and care is driven underground, pregnant people and providers go to jail, and many individuals are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term against their will. Everyone is less free. We see it in Texas, and we see it overseas. When you look at the case of Josseli Barnica in Texas, who died because she was denied an emergency, lifesaving abortion, it is remarkably like that of Beatriz, whose pregnancy threatened her health and life, in El Salvador. I note, however, that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognised in December that abortion is a human right, and the government of El Salvador violated Beatriz’s rights by denying her an abortion.

Yet, with Trump’s cabinet picks, he has doubled down on a global anti-reproductive rights agenda. Elise Stefanik will presumably be ambassador to the United Nations, an institution she has harshly criticised. Pam Bondi, nominee for Attorney General, has defended Florida’s anti-abortion law and the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. Russ Vought, a Project 2025 co-author, would shape federal funding as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Marco Rubio is a vocal supporter of the Global Gag Rule and would bring his anti-rights ideology to bear as Secretary of State. Dr. David Weldon, whose record is staunchly anti-abortion, would be in charge of the Centers for Disease Control, which under Project 2025 would expand abortion surveillance. And this is a short list of anti-rights ideologues who would be in power.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/trump-project-2025-abortion-rights-inauguration/

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