“It’s not only the ‘abortion police’ that a victory for the MAGATS portends, it’s a pregnancy police, a women’s health care police, and a sexual activities police,” writes Yale Law School constitutional scholar and Donald Trump antagonist Laurence Tribe, talking about what a Trump 2024 victory could augur.
Despite broad support by the majority of Americans for reproductive rights extending from abortion to contraception, an influential minority on the right is driving plans for increasing reproductive restrictions from the federal level in a possible second Trump administration.
Trump has said he wants to leave abortion and other reproductive decisions to the states, asserting his preference as the Supreme Court’s intent in its Roe-shattering Dobbs decision — but as Politico reported in January: “In emerging plans that involve everything from the EPA to the Federal Trade Commission to the Postal Service, nearly 100 anti-abortion and conservative groups are mapping out ways the next president can use the sprawling federal bureaucracy to curb abortion access.”
In the tweet below, Tribe describes the sobering reality he foresees as a result of those efforts, presenting a dystopian vision as a major warning to men in the political middle and even to conservatives who value individual freedoms and scorn government overreach. “Women get it,” Tribe writes, “but here’s a word to my male followers…”
Women get it, but here’s a word to my male followers: imagine not being able to buy a condom, get a doctor to treat a genital illness, or seek care for your pregnant partner without triggering a police investigation or a search of your sexual history. That’s Trumplandia, guys.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) June 11, 2024
The legal scholar warns that in “Trumplandia” any citizen’s sexual history could be subject to examination by police. And something as routine today as buying a condom could well be transformed into an illicit process to procure contraband in a gray market.
A ban put in place at the federal level would also render toothless the reproductive protections voted in by numerous states after Dobbs. Or as Vice President Kamala Harris put it to New York and California, “don’t get too comfortable.”
It’s not only the “abortion police” that a victory for the MAGATS portends, it’s a pregnancy police, a women’s health care police, and a sexual activities police. 2024 is 40 years after 1984, but we might need to revise our calendars unless we go all out to win big this November
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) June 11, 2024