How 'deprivation of women’s rights' is 'central' to MAGA and anti-abortion ideology: conservative

03 October 2022

Before he founded the MAGA movement, Donald Trump wasn’t a far-right Republican, but rather, was more of a Blue Dog Democrat ideologically — and he wasn’t in favor of outlawing abortion or overturning Roe v. Wade. The centrist Trump of the 1990s was anti-abortion but pro-choice; during an October 1999 interview, Trump told with NBC News’ Tim Russert, “I’m very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject. But you still — I just believe in choice.”

That was before Trump, during his 2016 presidential campaign, flip-flopped and formed a close alliance with the far-right evangelical movement. The MAGA movement and the anti-abortion movement are now joined at the hip — an alliance that Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin discusses in her October 3 column.

“It would be a mistake to see the focus on abortion as distinct from the MAGA war on democracy,” explains the Never Trumper, who often voted Republican in the past but has been a scathing critic of Trumpism. “Pundits and politicians tend to observe a bright distinction between the Donald Trump MAGA movement’s assault on democracy and the right-wing evisceration of women’s reproductive rights. After all, some pro-democracy voices on the right are anti-abortion. But simply because not all forced-birth advocates are MAGA authoritarian supporters, that doesn’t mean a critical point should be overlooked: The attack on women’s self-determination and autonomy is as much a part of MAGA’s fascistic affinities as is the cult’s fondness for violence and White Christian nationalism.”

Far-right authoritarians like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Rubin notes, are known for their “appeals to hyper-masculinity and demands for women to be limited to their roles as women and mothers” — not unlike the MAGA movement and the Christian Right in the United States.

“Mainstream media coverage has no problem recognizing the link between the MAGA anti-democratic movement and racism/White nationalism,” Rubin observes. “One need only look at the Confederate flags carried through the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or listen to right-wing fearmongering about immigrants to understand racism is intrinsic to the MAGA movement. However, when it comes to women’s rights, we see little acknowledgment in mainstream reporting and commentary that misogyny and deprivation of women’s rights are central to a movement playing largely on White male hysteria.”

Rubin adds, “In sum, MAGA support for government intrusion into Americans’ most intimate decisions reflects an authoritarian outlook. It is not a coincidence that this targeting of women is occurring in tandem with a developing voter registration gender gap favoring women. They understand all too well that the GOP’s quest for a national abortion ban is about their reproductive rights — and also about their inclusion in society and ultimately, the preservation of democracy.”

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