Like so many others, Allison Schneider was bitterly disappointed when she woke up on Nov. 9 to learn that Donald Trump – and not Hillary Clinton – won the presidential race.
Schneider, an OB-GYN resident intern at the Kaiser Oakland Medical Center in California, recently wrote a column for the Huffington Post about how she hopes to be an abortion practitioner some day and how the election results affect her work.
She wrote:
The afternoon of November 8th, I felt elated. My co-resident and I had successfully placed an IUD in a frightened 17 year-old in need of emergency contraception, preventing an unwanted teen pregnancy. And, a woman was about to be elected president. The next day, as I stared numbly at my computer at 6:30am in the pre-operative charting room, I struggled to keep my mind focused on the surgeries I was going to perform that day. My senior resident, a woman of unflappable composure in even the most dire emergencies, walked into the room. We looked at each other, embraced, and cried. This strong surgeon, mother, and mentor briefly cracked under the weight of the visceral grief we shared.
It’s no secret that abortion advocates really wanted – and expected — Hillary Clinton to win the presidential election. Clinton supported abortion on demand, including late-term abortions, and opposed common sense regulations such as sex-selection abortion bans and safety requirements for abortion facilities.
In comparison, Donald Trump describes himself as pro-life and has been filling his administration with strong pro-life leaders who oppose abortion.
Among the current hopes are that federal lawmakers will soon move to defund the abortion giant Planned Parenthood of its nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding. Trump promised to sign such a measure if it reaches his desk. Trump also promised to appoint “pro-life” justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. One seat, that of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, currently is open.
Several more also could come open under Trump’s administration, creating the possibility of a conservative- majority court that could reverse Roe v. Wade .
Both of these promises are worrisome in Schneider’s mind:
As women’s health care providers, we cannot stand on the sidelines and watch while Roe v. Wade and Title X funding ― which supports vital family planning services for the most vulnerable women in our population ― rest on the chopping block. If any one of Trump’s proposed conservative nominees to the Supreme Court are confirmed, we will be fighting once again to preserve a woman’s constitutional right to make her own healthcare choices.
If given the opportunity, this administration will wage a war on women’s health and we have to show up to fight it. In states like Ohio, where Governor John Kasich recently signed a bill into law banning abortion after 20 weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest, this battle has already begun.
Schneider ended her column with a call to action, urging abortion supporters like herself to stand up against these pro-life initiatives.
She concluded with these final, ironic words: “Every baby I deliver reminds me of who we’re fighting for. This is their future. They deserve better than Trump’s America, and so do we.”
Unfortunately, it’s those babies who she and her fellow abortion advocates also are fighting against. Because of Roe v. Wade and the work of abortion practitioners in the past 43 years, close to 60 million unborn babies have died unjustly in abortions.
The election results are a signal that the American people are ready for a change. Abortion has destroyed too many babies’ lives and hurt too many women’s and men’s for far too long.
Pro-lifers are hopeful that the incoming administration will be one that embraces every human being as a valuable, irreplaceable member of society, including those not yet born.
