Donald Trump was elected the 47th President of the United States on Nov. 6, 2024. As a woman who hopes to have a family one day, this situation terrifies me.
During his first term as the 45th president, Trump promised to drastically restrict women’s rights to their bodies. He did so by appointing extremely conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, tipping the scales of justice to the far right. Almost immediately, the court overturned Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1973 that prevented states from enacting laws to prohibit women’s access to abortion in their 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling.
For his next presidency, Trump doesn’t plan to slow down. The president-elect now says he will leave each state to decide its abortion policy. Trump called the wave of states that have enacted abortion restrictions since 2022 “a beautiful thing to watch,” according to AP News. During his latest campaign, Trump dubbed himself the “most pro-life president,” according to CBS News (2024), and he plans to restrict reproductive rights further, even if he is hiding behind the state’s rights rhetoric. I am enraged that a man found liable for sexual abuse in 2023 now has the power to make decisions over my body.
Women must take care of themselves before the next Trump presidency tries to strip us of our rights completely. This has opened the floodgates for misogyny and hate to be deemed “OK” by men throughout the country. Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, “Your body, my choice!” on election night. This statement has become the battle cry of pathetic and intolerant men who want to turn back time to make women into the perfect Stepford Wives model: cooking, cleaning and baby-making machines available for all of their needs.
One way for us to protect our rights to our bodies is by changing our birth control methods to long-term options, such as intrauterine devices (IUDs) or contraceptive arm implants, which last many years and are highly effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies. This switch would allow women to be free from the government radar during Trump’s four-year term.
Personally, I am choosing to switch from the pill to an IUD to ensure not one person, court ruling or government has the opportunity to make a decision about my body autonomy for me. A decision that may well be one of the hardest a woman would make in her life, a decision potentially born out of a horrible violation of one’s agency. That decision should be mine and mine alone.
We must protect ourselves as best as possible from a Trump presidency that will not have our best interests at heart.
Since the repeal of Roe v. Wade, 22 states have banned or significantly restricted access to abortions, according to reporting from Kaia Hubbard, Melissa Quinn and Taylor Johnston from CBS News (2024). According to the Center for Reproductive Rights (2022), abortion is not just illegal but can warrant both civil and criminal penalties as well. At least four states have attempted to prevent access to contraceptives from publicly funded Medicaid programs, according to The Right to Contraception Act (2022).
Part of Trump’s administration backs the ultra-conservative Project 2025, a proposal for the next president that aims to restrict medicated abortions by reversing the FDA’s approval of abortion-inducing drugs and inhibiting these medications from being sent through the U.S. Postal Service, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (2024). While Trump has recently distanced himself from Project 2025, according to CBS News, he hasn’t taken a consistent stance on it overall. We must take precautions against his future policies.
The legality of abortion has a long history in America. Historically performed by midwives, attitudes toward abortion changed when the American Medical Association excluded women and POC from practicing medicine in 1857. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, abortions were illegal in most states and territories. World War II sparked further anti-abortion sentiments because many people believed women belonged at home raising children. However, the laws enacted at that time didn’t prevent abortions, just safe access to them.
In the 1950s and ’60s more than a million illegal abortions were performed each year in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute; in 1965, 17% of pregnancy-related deaths were associated with illegal abortions.
Research recently conducted by the JAMA Network Journal concluded that birth control prescriptions decreased by 5.6% nationwide after the Dobbs decision. JAMA found that the use of emergency contraceptives fell by 65% in the most restrictive states because women were unsure of their legality. A 2021 study at Tulane University noted that in states with more restrictive abortion access, maternal mortality rates are 7% higher than those of states with fewer restrictions.
According to a study by Birth Injury Lawyers Group, reported by Newsweek, online searches for birth control rose by 254% in the days following the 2024 presidential election. One friend of mine is devastated; she doesn’t want her daughter going through her formative years under a government and president who hates women and has said such horrible things about us.
My sister said, “I’m grieving my pride in being an American. I’m not proud to be one at all anymore. Mom and Meema and all of the women who fought and bled and died for women’s rights were slapped in the face and spat on by their fellow Americans after the election was called.”
Regardless of which side of the abortion debate women fall on, our country is going down a path where soon we will not have the right to choose.
To anyone considering long-term birth control: Now is the time to take action. Soon it will be too late. I urge women to do research and take the necessary measures to do what is right for them. Our bodies are our own, and we must protect them from unjust, overly restrictive laws in an era of diminishing personal rights.
