Happy Friday everyone! It is me @Hegemommy taking over this account with some NEWS 

We are two months out from the election and you know what that means? Time for Donald Trump to chum the evangelical waters with fresh promises his “pro-life” agenda for a second term.

Yesterday Trump’s campaign released a letter to “pro-life leaders and activists” highlighting some of his plans should he have a second term. The letter was released the same day the Vice President Mike Pence was “touring” an anti-choice pregnancy center in North Carolina. So.

So yeah, when the going gets tough on the campaign trail, conservatives pivot to abortion.

What did Trump promise evangelical voters yesterday? Well more federal judges for one, including more Supreme Court Justices. He could feasibly get four more SCOTUS picks if reelected.

So that’s terrible.

Trump also promised to “defund Planned Parenthood entirely” which, you know, who needs functional health care centers during a pandemic amirite?

Conservatives have been screaming about defunding Planned Parenthood since the dawn of time. When the first life forms crawled out of the primordial ooze, anti-choicers were ALREADY ON SHORE SCREAMING ABOUT DEFUNDING PLANNED PARENTHOOD.

I imagine it looked something like this

And it’s not because they care about protecting patients or even fetuses.  They care about control—in particular economic control.

When conservatives talk about defunding Planned Parenthood they are talking about taking health care away from over 2 million primarily low income patients and patients of color.

Remember! The attacks on Planned Parenthood are ALSO happening while conservatives push the Supreme Court to take away health insurance from folks in ANOTHER case challenging the Affordable Care Act. The Court hears arguments in that case just after the election. Convenient.

Is that all Trump promised conservatives yesterday? Lololololol if only. There’s more. Because there’s always more when it comes to conservatives attacking reproductive rights.

Trump also promised to sign a whole bunch of (blatantly unconstitutional) anti-choice legislation, including laws that would criminalize doctors who perform abortions.

I put the BLATANTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL part in parentheses because Trump and Republicans have spent the last 3 years packing federal courts with over 200 judges, most of whom think that the rule of law is just a matter of opinion.

Here’s the letter the Trump campaign sent to pro-life leaders and activists. You can see the campaign accuses the Biden camp of supporting “abortion up until the moment of birth” and infanticide. Those are lies. 

https://cdn.donaldjtrump.com/public-files/press_assets/pro-life-letter-potus.pdf

I mean, really. Infanticide?!

The thing is, those are lies with real world consequences. The National Abortion Federation tracks violence against abortion providers and incidents targeting clinics is on the rise. Their last report is from 2018 and is sobering to say the least. 

https://prochoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2018-Anti-Abortion-Violence-and-Disruption.pdf

And just last week anti-choice activists in Michigan staged an illegal blockade of an abortion clinic in Sterling. Some reports have law enforcement showing sympathy with the clinic protesters. Which. Yikes.  https://msmagazine.com/2020/08/31/anti-abortion-clinic-blockade-in-michigan-receives-sympathy-from-local-police/

This is all to say that as the election gets closer we can expect the rhetoric from conservatives around abortion and reproductive health care in general to get more outrageous as they try and drive voter turn-out.

So gird your loins, folks. It’s gonna be a bumpy two months. But we’ve got it covered for you here at @Rewire_News

On that note....

@Hegemommy out