by Samantha Goldman
An executive order Trump issued on May 4 served as a big step in his commitment to the Christian Fascist movement to dismantle the Johnson Amendment. This is the law that prevents religious tax-exempt organizations from endorsing candidates. What does giving “churches their voices back” look like? It looks like further emboldening hate preachings, churches more freely donating and fundraising for candidates who hold their patriarchal views, and empowering Christian Fascists to affect policy.
Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, representatives passed the American Health Care Act (AHCA). If it passes the Senate, this law will spell catastrophe and literally death to low-income people. It will specifically assail the lives of women and those who are LGBT. This bill is an all-out Christian Fascist war on women. It will make access to abortion and birth control (which are already largely inaccessible in much of the country) extremely difficult, and for many women, in effect impossible.
A centerpiece of AHCA is the virtual defunding of Planned Parenthood. Putting the fascist’s draconian religious views above the lives and health of women, this bill bars Planned Parenthood from utilizing Medicaid funds. With 30% of patients at Planned Parenthood accessing medical care through Medicaid this Bill could potentially force the closure of their healthcare clinics nationwide. This would further encroach upon women’s access to safe abortion care even though the procedure cannot be paid for through Medicaid as per the Hyde Amendment. It would prevent millions of people from getting cancer screenings, birth control, and STI testing. This measure would put the lives of 2.5 million people in jeopardy. It is clear that this is a monumental leap toward theocracy when the only way Planned Parenthood’s doors could stay open is if they stopped offering abortion care.
The Christian Fascist movement in this country has always gone beyond abortion with its attack on contraception. Consistent with that, AHCA imposes severe restrictions on birth control. These Christian Fascists want nothing less than control over women’s reproduction, and this bill aims to do away with no-copay birth control. Bludgeoning access to abortion isn’t limited to those who rely on Medicaid. The Trump Regime’s AHCA contains drastic restrictions on those aiming to use private insurance to access an abortion by preventing those who are receiving insurance tax-credits from using it for abortion services. AHCA doesn’t stop there. It guts Medicaid expansion which particularly targets the LGBT community as Medicaid is the largest source of health insurance for those infected with HIV. This bill also will allow insurance companies to classify sexual assault/rape and domestic abuse as “pre-existing” conditions putting a disproportional burden on women and LGBT individuals.
Thursday was also National Prayer Day and it was certainly a day where the Christian Fascist element of the Trump Regime was allowed to shine. They declared again that a key aspect of making America great again is violently re-asserting itself as a Christian nation. None of this is an example of “how out of touch” the Trump Regime is with the American people but of how foundational the oppression of women is to their fascist program. While some are filling themselves with relief that the executive order “could have been worse” this is but part of a whole program of which this is only the opening salvo. As Refuse Fascism’s Call to Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime states, “The Trump/Pence regime will repeatedly launch new highly repressive measures, eventually clamping down on all resistance and remaking the law… IF THEY ARE NOT DRIVEN FROM POWER.”
Will we, like the characters of the Handmaids Tale, later recall that, “We didn’t look up from our phones until it was too late,” or will we read the warnings and act decisively with great determination demanding, and not stopping until, this whole fascist regime is driven from power?