Trump Abortion Laws Restrict My Choice of Colleges
As a young woman not quite old enough to vote this November, the prospect of Donald Trump being my “protector” terrifies me.
By taking away the national right to abortions and leaving it up to each state to make policy, I now must acutely consider each state’s abortion laws in considering which colleges I may attend next Fall.
It should benefit Gen Z men to know that their girlfriends can have access to abortion care, should they need it.
I don’t want Trump to be my protector. After hearing him brag about assaulting women in a resurfaced 2005 interview—saying, “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”— I’m understandably scared.
His “success” in appointing Supreme Court justices who would go on to overturn Roe is something he is trying to distance himself from. He knows that to win, he must go more “liberal” when it comes to abortion. He has said he wants abortion to be a state right rather than an all-out abortion ban he supported in 2020.
Worries Aplenty
I worry for myself and the women around me because many states won’t stop at abortions, going after emergency contraceptives and attempting to shut down Planned Parenthood, a crucial source of women’s health care for poor women and many college students. These clinics, after decades of protestors screaming “baby killers!” at women, provide breast cancer screenings and other women-specific care.
Additionally, sexual assaults are common on and around college campuses. According to the National Institute of Justice, in 85% to 90% of sexual assaults reported by college women, they knew their attackers.
It terrifies me that I could go off to college and have friends, or myself, be the victim of a crime and not have access to the healthcare I might need.
Alex Cooper, the host of the podcast Call Her Daddy, had presidential nominee Kamala Harris on her show earlier in October. Cooper, who is known as the “founding father” to her audience, discussed women’s reproductive rights in response to the Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade and the restrictive policies proposed by Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, who thinks women with cats instead of children are inferior and that parents, like himself, should get extra votes in elections.
Punishment, Trump Says
Trump, we should never forget, said during the 2016 presidential campaign that women who get abortions must be punished, something the misnamed “right to life” movement had not included in its menacing rhetoric.
The female host built a huge following by speaking out for women on sexual liberation, abortion rights, and how to deal with bad romantic relationships. “Call Her Daddy” refers to women acting like “the man”—confident and unafraid to speak their minds—unlike the submissive role for women promoted by many men, including Vance. Another aspect of her celebrity interviews and solo episodes is her raunchy sex advice, which shocked many Harris supporters.
Cooper’s audience is more than 90% female, with 75% viewers under 35. Globally, her podcast is #2, behind only the conservative podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.
Trump Flip-Flops On Abortion
While Trump bragged about appointing the three right-wing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe the first time a suitable case came before them. He seeks now to distance himself from his awful choices. Just last month, Trump argued the Floridian six-week abortion ban was too short, not that we know for sure whether the former president understands that most women have no idea that they are pregnant at six weeks.
Vice President Harris responded to his words, seeking to show that what he says at the moment cannot be trusted if he gets back to the White House surrounded by people who want to pass a federal law banning abortion, most contraceptives, and in vitro fertilization (IVF), which many couples need to create a family.
Harris, mockingly, said, “This is the same guy who said that women should be punished for having abortions… who, as president, hand-selected three United States Supreme Court members with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe V. Wade, and they did just as he intended. There are now 20 states with Trump Abortion bans, including bans that make no exception for rape or incest.”
More to Harris’ point, in 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, after defending a no-exception abortion ban, said he would aim to “eliminate all rapists from the streets.”
Abbott is vowing to take on the impossible. While I agree that there are ways to minimize the power of rapists and improve women’s safety, there is no 100% removal of any form of crime.
How are government officials going to police college parties? Dating on campus? Half of college-aged women reporting aggravated sexual assault were on a date with the perpetrator.
Harris Takes Action
Harris talked about her upbringing, being the older sister of a divorced mom. She shared an anecdote about her teenage friend, who confided that her stepfather was sexually abusing her.
Though just a teenager like me, Harris swung into action. The future prosecutor brought her friend to the Harris household, giving her refuge. Then Harris and her mother encouraged the young victim to come forward: “It upset me so that someone, where they should feel safe and protected, was being so horribly abused and violated,” Harris now tells campaign rallies.
Helping that sexual assault victim set the trajectory of Harris’s career. “I decided at a young age that I wanted to do the work of protecting vulnerable people,” Harris tells audiences. She went on to get a law degree and become a local prosecutor right out of law school.
Harris wants to create a country that empowers women who are victims of sexual assault to come forward and seek justice. In America, one in three women will be sexually assaulted. The victims are females of all kinds—married adults, college students, and even children.
The millions of women who watch or listen to Call Her Daddy find hope in Harris’s promise that she will act for them as president, just as she did for her high school classmate – whether as a protector against sexual assault or of abortion rights.
Harris’s childhood stories, trials, and tribulations, and hopes for America on the Call Her Daddy podcast have greatly humanized her to young audiences—many of whom have adopted the “lesser of two evils” mentality, meaning they planned to vote for Harris only because they considered her less awful than Trump. Overcoming that attitude is crucial to Harris’s chances of becoming president in a nation where hardly anyone knew who she was just a few months ago.
Shocked, They Say
Many Americans, or at least many of the conservative pundits who support Trump, expressed shock that Harris would appear on the Call Her Daddy podcast due to the raunchy topics that Cooper asks her celebrity guests. One X user wrote, “Let me get this straight. Hurricane victims in North Carolina and Georgia are pleading for help from the government after losing their loved ones, and their homes. At the same time, Kamala Harris is doing a sex podcast called ‘Call her Daddy.’ Talk about priorities.”
Harris addressed viewers as the “daddy gang” and shared her love for Alex’s podcasts. Harris clearly believes that going on that show may be crucial to her winning re-election. I also think it is key for voters to understand her policies based on her driving factor: helping everyday people.
At about the same time, Trump has also appeared on several men’s podcasts with large Gen-Z male viewership to tap into the “Manosphere.” Trump aims to persuade young men that his policies will benefit them.
That matters for Trump because the Harvard Youth Poll found that only 23% of Americans aged 18 to 29 plan to vote for Trump. When only young men are counted, 53% support Harris, while only 36% favor Trump.
Abortion, however, is not an issue that only the female viewers of Call Her Daddy should care about. After all, every child has a biological father and mother. It should benefit Gen Z men to know that their girlfriends can have access to abortion care, should they need it.
Let’s hope that young men ponder that, especially considering the proposals by likely Trump appointees to seek ways to make contraceptives unavailable and, they hope, illegal.
