Isa Abbott, Asst. Opinion Editor–
As I watched the electoral college turn America’s states red, I realized I lived in a world in which I may never know if a woman can be president. More than anything, I recognized I live in a country where more than half of its voters voted for a rapist and a felon over a woman; a dangerous reality, indeed.
I slide to the ground, my back against the wall. Piercing silence fills my head and the room around me. It grows louder. Is this what the next four years will be like? As the days go on, people tell me I should move on, but how can I when my rights will be stripped and our lives will be dictated by a misogynistic man? The silence will grow louder and louder over the next four years, and I wonder if anyone will ever hear me.
What the outcome of the 2024 presidential election means for women and what is at stake is the silencing of our rights to healthcare, our rights to not only jobs in general, but high authority jobs, and our safety.
To begin, what women need to know is that Trump is “pro-life” and an anti-abortionist. The common argument of anti-abortionists goes, that it is murdering children who will never have the chance to decide whether or not they want to live, or that it is a cell, therefore it is living.
The 14th Amendment says, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property.” Though it is up for interpretation, my belief is that property is what belongs to us, which can also be our bodies. We are the ones who generally control our bodies and protect and take care of it, so it is arguably something we own and control; in other words: property. The right to our bodies as property is a fundamental, constitutional right.
The issue with this is that the government and its citizens are currently more worried about what women do with their bodies (and taking away their constitutional right to their bodies), and their unborn children over the safety of actual living children. Instead, it is more important in “trumpism” to protect our guns than our children and the health of their mothers.
During a Univision town hall with undecided Latino voters, Trump said, “We have a Second Amendment and a right to bear arms,” Trump said. “I’m very strongly an advocate of that. I think that if you ever tried to get rid of it, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You wouldn’t be able to take away the guns, because people need that for security, they need it for entertainment and for sport, and other things. But they also, in many cases, need it for protection.” In addition, he threatened to veto legislation from Congress that would have allowed for stronger background checks on those who buy guns. At an NRA event in Houston, he also argued that schools should not be a gun-free zone because it takes away the right to protect themselves.
The question at hand is what should people originally protect themselves from in schools? Children? If our country took the precautions to protect children and citizens from harm, they would enforce extreme background checks and laws that would limit the use of guns. In effect of those limitations, there would be significantly less school shootings. In a school, there should be nothing dangerous to protect yourself from if we have strict gun laws. The lack of gun safety and the safety of children in schools is prevalent within our country, and yet, controlling women’s bodies is at the top priority for men in governmental power.
Next, pro-life for “trumpists” does not mean supporting the lives of others, it means supporting misogyny and selfishness. What the 2024 election outcome means for women and their lives is their privacy and safetywill be silenced and ignored. In banning abortion, the government is first allowing women to die of carrying a miscarried baby to full term. For example, in Florida, Deborah Dorbert had to carry her baby, who would knowingly die of kidney complications, to full term because she was nine weeks over Florida’s abortion law of up to 15 weeks. Not only are these laws unconstitutional, but they are mentally and physically harmful. Carrying a dead child or dying child can cause bleeding, excessive cramps, fluid or tissue passing from the vagina, and heart issues, such as arrhythmias. Beyond this, the mental pain and trauma that comes with birthing and carrying a stillborn child is excruciating.
The state laws for abortion are not pro-life because they mentally and physically damage the lives of women. In this sense, it is only an act of selfishness to ban abortion because it does not take into consideration what women endure. It is misogynistic because it attempts to rob women of their rights in a way that would benefit men and their traditional roles, maintaining gendered hierarchy.
Abortion laws are also a form of white supremacist control and control of women in the workforce. There is a phrase that says, “women cannot have it all,” but we do not see it used for men. Abortion bans force women to carry children, and stay at home with their children instead of going to work. It is literally an attempt to keep women at home instead of excelling in the workforce because they are terrified of a reality in which women have higher authority.
One of the first times in which abortion became illegal was in the 19th century when a massive flow of immigrants came to America. In order to continue reproducing the white race and maintain its “supremacy,” abortion became illegal so white women would continue to reproduce the white race. Historically, abortion’s origin comes from white supremacy, which is not surprising as to why the ideologies of “trumpism” are also connected to racism, and why Trump believes in banning abortion.
Ultimately, what urges my fear the most is that in two months, our country will be run by someone who has said it is okay to do whatever he wants to women, over five months was charged with four criminal cases with many more to be determined, has several accusations by at least 18 women of attempted rape and sexual misconduct, and has announced the promotion of Matt Gaetz as the attorney general, a man who has been investigated for sex trafficking. Within this small list of many other things to come, it is clear that women are not safe under a country being ruled by men who believe women are significantly more “inferior” and “submissive” than themselves.
Those who suggest the country should move on and accept the outcome of the 2024 election are people who have the privilege to not be affected by this election. Instead of silencing women and manipulating them to “accept it and move on,” we should continue to talk about it. When we stop talking about it, we allow the silencing of women to grow louder. In order to make change, women need to continue speaking louder no matter how hopeless we feel.
The day after the election I opened my door and saw a sticky note from my dormitory’s BSA. She wrote, “Keep hope alive! You are not alone.” At that moment, I knew I would never give up fighting for my rights, and I will continue the conversation instead of moving on from it. Even though the turn out of the election means we have to keep fighting, even when we are exhausted, it does not mean one day women won’t win. It means we will continue to grow stronger and more resilient so one day we can.