Abortion | Feminist writer warns of consequences if Donald Trump wins

(Washington) In 2022, after federal protection for abortion was lifted in the United States, feminist writer Jessica Valenti began cataloguing the torrent of bans and painful stories that were pouring in. Initially a personal endeavor, the effort quickly morphed into a much broader mission.

His daily newsletter, Abortion, Every Dayquickly became much more than a way to “organize the chaos of her brain,” in her own words. It is a chronicle of American women’s struggle for the right to control their bodies.

Jessica Valenti gave an interview to AFP before the publication of her latest book, Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win (which can be translated as Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win).

The 45-year-old New Yorker is urging Democrats to go on the offensive in the face of the stakes of the November presidential election.

If Kamala Harris “loses, what we’re looking at is a national ban” on abortion, “even if it doesn’t take the form of a law in Congress,” she believes.

One of Donald Trump’s first steps, she said, could be to replace the head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and restrict access to the abortion pill by revoking the authorization to send it by mail.

Some even suggest that a law of 19^e century, on the regulation of what is considered “obscene”, could be used to prohibit the sending of any material used during abortions.

Does this sound absurd? Jessica Valenti remembers when feminists were called hysterical if they warned about a possible Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a federal right to abortion.

“We’re told it’ll never happen,” she said of a national ban. “The same experts refuse to acknowledge that we’ll probably be right again.”

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling, about 20 states have banned or severely restricted access to abortion.

Despite some exceptions in cases of rape, incest or danger to the woman’s life, doctors are often afraid to intervene. And stories of women not receiving adequate care in the event of complications have multiplied.

The media ProPublica reported this week the deaths of two women in Georgia who were not treated despite complications after taking an abortion pill because of state laws.

“Horror Stories”

For Jessica Valenti, the anti-abortion movement is a misogynistic project led by a white and Christian supremacist movement.

“It is impossible for them to credibly say that this is about saving lives,” she says.

For this activist, as for many women, the fight is as political as it is personal.

She herself had an abortion, three months before meeting her husband, with whom she had a daughter two years later.

She wanted another child, but complications during a subsequent pregnancy give her a 50 percent chance of developing a fatal disease. “I made a decision as a parent,” she said, describing how she chose to abort so as not to risk her daughter becoming an orphan.

While the media often focuses on the “horror stories” of women losing their fertility due to the new bans, Valenti points out that “all the abortions that are denied are tragedies.”

“Sometimes people just don’t want to be pregnant,” she says. “It’s vital to your freedom to have control over your body, your life and your future.”

She urged Democrats to focus on strengthening legal protections at a time when polls show broad support for abortion rights among Americans.

In the last two years, whether it was the midterm elections or referendums, “every election where abortion played a role, the right to abortion won,” she recalls.

She is more optimistic with Kamala Harris, who speaks out almost daily on the issue, than with Joe Biden, who was more cautious on the subject.

But Donald Trump “was strategic” in presenting himself as moderate, “deliberately blurring his position,” she said. “I’m still worried.”