A vote for Trump is a vote to ban abortion in all 50 states

Anyone who suggests otherwise is just trying to elect him (so he can ban abortion)

It’s pretty ridiculous.

As abortion rights have become an even bigger issue in the 2024 election—with Trump flopping into public support of the ban in Florida that has destroyed abortion access for the South—there’s been almost no discussion about how Trump banned abortion for much of America and is most likely to ban it for the rest of country.

It’s the Supreme Court, obviously.

Donald Trump’s three appointments to the Supreme Court are the only reason we now have abortion bans in 18 states. And his appointments to the Supreme Court are how he will ensure those bans either last the rest of our lives or expand into all 50 states.

If he replaces a Justice who voted for Dobbs, that means 40 more years of bans in the states where women are already treated the worst. If he replaces any of the four votes against Dobbs, get ready a national abortion ban enforced by the highest court in the land.

That’s all you need to know about Donald Trump and abortion. And anything else you can say about him related to the issue quickly gets even worse for anyone who believes in bodily autonomy.

Forget discussions about whether he’d sign a national ban from Congress; actual legislation implemented through duly elected officials isn’t how Republicans do things.

The far-right already believes abortion is ALREADY banned in all 50 states, and it just needs a president willing to tell everyone that. And Donald Trump is that president. 

As Kevin M. Kruse told us, it was Trump’s nakedly “transactional” willingness to promise the far right their pick of Supreme Court Justices that won him the support of anti-abortion extremists. And he made the fondest dream come true both by overturning Roe and pretending that Americans wanted to get rid of a wildly popular precedent supported by nearly two-thirds of voters. 

And we and they know he will continue to make their wettest dreams come true because “fetal personhood”—which is code for “abortion is already banned in all 50 states”—appears clearly in the GOP platform. (And it’s also code for, “Yes, we will also ban IVF and the most reliable forms of birth control, though we may be coy about how we do it.”)

The fundamentalists that make MAGA possible expect Trump to come into office and begin to use the incredible powers of the federal government to use existing laws to act as if abortion is already illegal. And his Department of Justice, his FDA, his CDC, and his Department of Health and Human Services will do everything they can to end abortion clinic by clinic, shutting them down with burdens that no medical professional will be able to overcome. Most of the plan is right there in Project 2025.

And Jessica Valenti has vividly laid out how this national ban, which they won’t call a national ban, would look.

And you know who will back him up on this plot to pretend abortion is already banned?

The six Republicans on the Supreme Court. That’s the whole game.

Anti-abortion rights activists who pretend to be abuzz at Trump’s incoherence on the subject do not doubt what he’ll do in office. They got him to come out against Amendment 4, which has been polling near the 60% it needs to restore abortion rights in Florida. And they will get him to continue his extraordinary success at taking away reproductive freedoms.

So it would be best if you didn’t doubt it either. And I don’t think you do because you’re not a media outlet trying to get clicks or a far-right Christian Nationalist trying to elect Trump by trying to pretend he isn’t a walking abortion ban.

Women generally get it. And they get that Vice President Harris will do everything she can to reverse Trump’s bans, which is why we’re seeing some remarkable voter registration numbers. Let’s hope it keeps up because as bad as the status quo is when it comes to reproductive freedom, it could get far worse. And fast.