In a Desperate Bid to Boost his Approval Ratings

I don't think the guy with the guns at the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner was staged, but I do think Trump's party is going to play it for all its worth. Hey, it got his approval ratings up last time, yeah?

That's not what I wanted to write about here.

Here, I want to talk about a different attempt to boost his ratings: an attempt to keep birth control out of the hands of Americans.

This is never going to happen, I was promised by endless people when Roe v Wade was overturned. Birth control is too popular! Yeah, well, so is abortion. Most people want it to be available; one in three women have had an abortion. I had one after my miscarriage, though when I say that people start shrieking that that is not "really" an abortion.

Yes, it fucking is. I needed it, too, because otherwise the fetal remains might have stayed in my uterus, causing sepsis, and damaging my future fertility.

How did the "conservatives" convince people abortion was evil?

(Except for their abortions, which like mine are not "really" abortions. I know people who are absolutely opposed to abortion until their sixteen year old needs one, and then it's "different," or until someone they know needs an abortion for medical reasons, and then that's not "really" an abortion.)

They pushed propaganda in their "conservative" Christian schools and their churches and their publications. They did this for 40 years. Even then, most people still want abortions to be legal.

Over the past two decades, these Christians have been spreading the lie that birth control is an abortifacient, that it "kills babies," and that a fertilized zygote is a baby. Facebook and TikTok and Instagram are filled with "health" advocates explaining how birth control damages women's health. 

Now Trump wants "to curb contraception."

His DHHS has released new guidelines, "prioritizing childbirth over contraception," and trying to convince people to use "natural family planning," instead of contraception. ('Natural family planning' is how we spell parenthood, by the way.)

Why? You know why.

The unwieldy political coalition that sent Trump back to the White House in 2024 is clamoring for action. For different reasons, an alliance of MAHA adherents, social conservatives and pronatalists are eager to go after birth control. With Trump sinking in the polls and his coalition fracturing, he may want to deliver for his core supporters. 

I'd say this was a terrible idea, but the past decade has proved to me that today's Trump supporters will literally do anything their ugly tin god tells them to do, and believe anything he tells them to believe. If it contradicts the reality, well, why should they believe in reality? That's what liberals do.