By Felesia Martin
District 7
Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors
Felesia Martin, District 7
Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors
In 2022, when Donald Trump’s extremist judges cast the deciding votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, Wisconsin’s reproductive health system was thrown into chaos. For over a year, reproductive health care providers halted offering abortion services in fear of prosecution. Women in Wisconsin were forced to travel far distances out of state to get care they needed. Though abortion services have since resumed in Wisconsin, our rights are still on the line – and they’ll be on the ballot this November.
The stakes of this election couldn’t be higher – Trump is running to roll back our rights, while President Biden and Vice President Harris are running to restore them. Period. Since taking office, President Biden and Vice President Harris have maintained a rock solid commitment to protecting reproductive rights. President Biden wants to restore the protections women had under Roe for nearly 50 years and has called on Congress to codify them into federal law. Vice President Harris recently made a visit to Milwaukee to address attacks on abortion rights as part of her nationwide reproductive freedom tour. Wisconsin was her first stop on the tour because she knows that we are at the center of the fight for reproductive rights.
Across the country, Trump and MAGA Republicans have been taking their fight to new extremes. Trump made it known he wants to take his anti-abortion agenda even further – he’s promising to push for a nationwide abortion ban. Moreover, after the Alabama Supreme Court threatened access to IVF by ruling that frozen embryos were children, Trump’s campaign refused to say whether he would back a federal law codifying access to IVF. It’s no surprise Trump can’t commit to protecting IVF – it’s because he’s responsible for the recent attacks on it.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Trump is proud of stripping women of the rights we had for nearly 50 years under Roe. He takes credit for being the person to “kill” and “get rid of” Roe v. Wade. While our state was dealing with the consequences of this decision, Trump was boasting about the “great thing” he did.
And right now, his MAGA Republican allies here in Wisconsin are hard at work pushing to ban abortion in our state. This would be disastrous. Experts have warned that banning abortion will only exacerbate racial inequities in maternal mortality. In a state like Wisconsin where we already suffer from high disparity rates, we simply can’t afford to make this problem worse. That’s exactly what electing Donald Trump would do.
Moreover, Wisconsin is a pro-choice state. Polls have shown the overwhelming majority of Wisconsinites support women having access to abortion services, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won Wisconsin in 2020 with a pro-choice message. But Trump and MAGA Republicans don’t care about what we think, they’re willing to disregard our voices if it means accomplishing their extreme political agenda.
Thankfully, in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, we have leaders who listen – to us and the experts. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris know restricting abortion access only makes outcomes worse, and they know that’s not the agenda we want to see here in Wisconsin. They are committed to protecting reproductive freedom and ensuring every woman has the ability to make her own health care decisions – including accessing IVF and eradicating the racial disparities that plague our medical system. I’m excited to vote for them this November because a vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is a vote for choice and freedom. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for a national abortion ban.