It’s a hell of a thing to hear your president call you a murderer.
That’s not quite the whole picture, though, of what President Donald Trump did to later abortion patients during the State of the Union speech Tuesday night. After he invoked the Madonna, a “beautiful image of a mother holding her infant child,” women abruptly vanished for the rest of the time he took to throw enough red meat to the anti-choice base to keep money from the evangelical coffers flowing. Instead, we disappeared into the “womb” from which “beautiful” babies are “ripped moments before birth;” we are nothing more than the “womb” in which “children … can feel pain.”
And then, mission accomplished, the president turned from describing children as the “holy image of God” to pronouncing — in the same oddly emotional tone of voice — that the “final part of my agenda is to protect America’s national security.”
It wasn’t an accident that his plea for the control — the security — of the nation’s wombs got shoved up next to the legacy of the military-industrial complex. We are mere ciphers of mothers, of women, of humans to be secured in the fight for an “America First” jingoism that has members of Congress chanting “USA! USA! USA!” like deluded fascist schoolboys, stars in their eyes.
But we are here, and we are not wombs, and we are not ciphers, and we have had enough. Although “late-term abortion” is an unscientific term — and thus, a ban on late-term abortion could refer to a range of policies — conservative politicians have fixated on the idea of 20-week bans, themselves nothing more than part of an explicit strategy of legal incrementalism designed to end in a total ban on abortion and the enshrinement of fetal personhood in the Constitution. A 20-week, second-trimester abortion may make people deeply uncomfortable, but it does none of the things the anti-choice movement says it does: A 20-week fetus cannot feel pain and is not viable. Abortions sought after 24 weeks, which New York recently allowed in some cases, are not “moments from birth.” The women who access abortions during the second half of the second trimester are compelled by a diverse and compelling set of circumstances, some of which society deems more appropriate than others.
But I am not one of these women. I have had a third-trimester abortion — in other words, an abortion after the 28th gestational week of pregnancy — and have gone on to speak about it under my own name. To my knowledge, there are only two other women who have done so in the United States. Behind us are hundreds of others across the years who cannot speak out because of stigma in their communities, because of overwhelming grief and trauma, because of shame, because of fear. In the year since my story first came out, I have (among other things) been told my uterus should be forcibly removed so I can’t have more children. I have been called a bloodthirsty murderer who only wanted a “perfect” child. And I have been told that I am a selfish, murderous eugenicist for not choosing perinatal hospice rather than abortion — an accusation that rings hollow, considering that hospice, in the dystopian news cycle following the passage of the Reproductive Health Act in New York and the introduction of a similar bill in Virginia, has evidently come to mean “executing a baby after birth.”
When President Trump talks about ripping “a baby from the mother’s womb moments before birth,” we are whom he is referencing. (As this apparently has to be said, no, babies are never aborted “moments before birth,” but yes, abortions in months seven and eight do, rarely, happen.) And a year and a half after my abortion, after listening to woman after woman unburden their hearts in the relative safety of private support groups, I still do not know how to shove the tangled realities of our stories into a similarly pithy soundbite. Life and love in extremis do not lend themselves to the slogan, to the vulgar cheer of the crowd. All I have is the truth, as much of it as I can hold in my hands. And the truth is that as much as I still hurt, in the quiet everyday moments, as much as I miss the child whose face I never saw, I can find in myself no regret, no shame, and no fear.
If that makes me a monster, then perhaps this administration needs women like us to be monstrous, one of many in the arsenal of human terrors the president would apparently use to keep Americans afraid and in line. In response to such politics of fear, I have nothing to say but this, from the psalm I sang at my son’s funeral: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. And I am not afraid.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy