When It Comes To Women's Choice Trump Will Be What Jonathan Mitchell Tells Him To Do
You probably noticed last week that Trump, wooing the evangelical faction of his coalition, pledged a nationwide abortion ban. Maggie Haberman reminded her readers that Señor T “has studiously avoided taking a clear position on restrictions to abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the middle of 2022, galvanizing Democrats ahead of the midterm elections that year. He has said in private that he wants to wait until the Republican presidential primary contest is over to publicly discuss his views, because he doesn’t want to risk alienating social conservatives before he has secured the nomination… Trump has approached abortion transactionally since becoming a candidate in 2015, and his current private discussions reflect that same approach. One thing Trump likes about a 16-week federal ban on abortions is that it’s a round number. ‘Know what I like about 16?’ Trump told one of these people, who was given anonymity to describe a private conversation. ‘It’s even. It’s four months.’”
He seems to think exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother are his magic wand with suburban voters and when he interviews people for the running mate slot, according to Haberman, if they don’t favor “the 3 exceptions,” he takes them off his list. His allies, on the other hand, have a different agenda, a radically different agenda, than his transactional approach— and it’s very, very ugly.
Yesterday, Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias reported that Trump allies “are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country. Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion— including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.” The mastermind behind all this: neo-fascist attorney Jonathan Mitchell, who wrote Texas' bounty hunter abortion ban.
“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” said Jonathan Mitchell, the legal force behind a 2021 Texas law that found a way to effectively ban abortion in the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned. “There’s a smorgasbord of options.”
Mitchell, who represented Trump in arguments before the Supreme Court over whether the former president could appear on the ballot in Colorado, indicated that anti-abortion strategists had purposefully been quiet about their more advanced plans, given the political liability the issue has become for Republicans.
“I hope he doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mitchell said of Trump. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”
… In policy documents, private conversations and interviews, the plans described by former Trump administration officials, allies and supporters propose circumventing Congress and leveraging the regulatory powers of federal institutions, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Justice and the National Institutes of Health.
The effect would be to create a second Trump administration that would attack abortion rights and abortion access from a variety of angles and could be stopped only by courts that the first Trump administration had already stacked with conservative judges.
“He had the most pro-life administration in history and adopted the most pro-life policies of any administration in history,” said Roger Severino, a leader of anti-abortion efforts in Health and Human Services during the Trump administration. “That track record is the best evidence, I think, you could have of what a second term might look like if Trump wins.”
Policies under consideration include banning the use of fetal stem cells in medical research for diseases like cancer, rescinding approval of abortion pills at the F.D.A. and stopping hundreds of millions in federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Such an action against Planned Parenthood would cripple the nation’s largest provider of women’s health care, which is already struggling to provide abortions in the post-Roe era.
The organizations and advocates crafting these proposals are not simply outside groups expressing wish lists of what they hope Trump would do in a second administration. They are people who have spent much of their professional careers fighting abortion rights, including some who were in powerful positions during Trump’s administration.
In his first term, Trump largely outsourced abortion policy to socially conservative lawyers and aides. Since he left office, some of those people have remained in Trump’s orbit, defending him in court, suggesting policy plans well beyond issues like abortion and attending events at Mar-a-Lago…
Frank Pavone, an anti-abortion activist whom Pope Francis removed from the priesthood for “blasphemous communication,” said he had discussed abortion policy at several poolside receptions at Mar-a-Lago.
“When I’m there at Mar-a-Lago,” he said, “I get strong affirmation from everyone I meet there for my work.”
Trump has not publicly addressed the extensive list of possible anti-abortion executive actions or the enforcement of the Comstock Act. Yet, Trump’s official blessing may not matter if his former aides and their networks are returned to key positions in the federal bureaucracy.
“The question will then become what can be done unilaterally at the executive branch level, and the answer is quite a bit,” Mitchell said. “But to the extent to which that’s done will depend on whether the president wants to take the political heat and whether the attorney general or the secretary of Health and Human Services are on board.”
Abortion opponents are enmeshed throughout the ecosystem of organizations that are suggesting policies for the next conservative administration. Russell Vought, a former senior Trump administration official who ran the Office of Management and Budget, is celebrated by the anti-abortion movement for successfully blocking funds for Planned Parenthood during the Trump administration. He now runs a think tank with close ties to the former president that has backed arguments in a Supreme Court case attempting to undo the 2000 approval of mifepristone, a widely used abortion medication.
…Polling indicates that plans banning or severely restricting abortion would most likely be deeply unpopular. Since Roe fell, support for legalized abortion has gained support. Only about 8 percent of American adults oppose abortion with no exceptions.
Biden administration officials say they have reached the limits of their powers to restore federal abortion rights. They have pushed Congress to pass legislation that would restore federal abortion rights, but the legislation has repeatedly failed to garner enough support in the Senate.
For more than a decade, Republicans have been trying to enact a federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks. That legislation, too, has failed to gain enough traction to pass.
“Congress isn’t going to pass a ban, but the Comstock Act is already on the books,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor and a historian of abortion at the University of California, Davis. “As interpreted in this way, it doesn’t have any exceptions— it applies at conception. It’s any abortion, full stop.”
… Abortion rights leaders have little doubt that a second Trump administration would go as far as possible to limit abortion rights and access. While their organizations are publicly hammering Republicans for embracing national bans, they quietly worry more about the damage Trump could materially do to their cause through executive actions.
“He’s trying to masquerade in public as a moderate,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America. “It’s mind-blowing that anyone would imagine he wouldn’t do worse in a second term.”
She added, “He’s going to do whatever Jonathan Mitchell wants.”
Makes me wonder how many abortions tfg has paid for.
Your choice will be, as it has been since Dobbs, arbitrary repeal of rights and privileges for women vs. indifference to and refusal to stand for rights and privileges for women.
State by state, it is possible that voters will affirm women's rights and privileges. But that will NOT prevent arbitrary repeal by the nazis, whether state by state or federally. And since democraps have always been loathe to stand up for ANYBODY'S rights and privileges (save for the rich), what the nazis end up doing is what shall be done. full stop.
But that's nothing new. Shithole has been like that for decades now. So keep swinging and missing. In baseball, you get 3 strikes and have to …