The rights of women are under assault: leadership that distrusts its people

By Alexander J. Schorr

Image: suffragists rallied outside White House in 1917, calling for the right to vote.

August 29, 2025 (Washington. D.C.) — Women’s rights in the United States are in danger of being eliminated or rolled back to pre-1960s, before women gained civil rights, equal pay rights, and reproductive rights. Even women’s right to vote has been weakened and some advocate eliminating the 19^th amendment that granted women the right to vote in 1920. Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsdeth reposted a video by a conservative pastor calling for repealing women’s right to vote.

Since Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day, much of the progress that women have made in the last century have been shaken and dismantled.  Though President Trump has said during his campaign, “I am going to protect the women of our country,” the exact opposite has happened. Each month, the National Organization for Women (NOW) has updated reporters on the Trump administration’s  assaults on women's rights, civil and reproductive freedoms, specifically focusing on economic security, safety, and healthcare.

The Trump administration's litany of acts undermining the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans so far include the following:

• Issued an executive order, along with provisions in the SAFE Act,  that makes it harder for many married women to vote by requiring that voter registration match the name on your birth certificate and requiring a passport to vote.
• Reduced protections for students in sexual misconduct cases and reversed President Biden’s expansion of Title IX interpretation that recognizes harassment or exclusion based on sexual orientation and gender identity as a form of discrimination (February 4, 2025).
• Passed an executive order banning transgender athletes from joining and participating in sports teams that align with their gender identity (February 4, 2025).
• Significantly cut funding allocations for crucial health research, threatening programs that directly impact women and people of color (February 7, 2025).
• Fired more than 1,300 employees including those working in the Office of Civil Rights (February 11, 2025).
• ​​Disobeyed a court order requiring the release of federal funding for vital medical research on illnesses like cancer and addiction (February 21,2025).
• Closed the office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity at the Social Security Administration (February 25, 2025).
• Closed the office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity at the Social Security Administration (February 25, 2025).
• President Trump has directed the Justice Department to drop a challenge to Idaho’s abortion ban, ending abortion access in nearly all circumstances, including when a pregnancy poses a serious risk to the woman’s life (March 4, 2025).
• Gutted funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Services Administration, which oversees programs maintaining the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and regulating the dispensaries of opioid treatment drugs (March 12, 2025).
• The current yearly budget cuts over $700 million from rent subsidies for more than 32,000 households of low-income and working Americans who now face eviction: these households include veterans, survivors of domestic violence, senior citizens, and the disabled (March 15, 2025).
• Approved a $168 million shortage from what is needed to maintain homeless services across 400 communities nationally. By extension, has jeopardized funding allocations for programs assisting underserved populations like public  workforce training, minority and women's health,  and college preparation programs for low-income students— including historically Black colleges and universities as well as Hispanic serving institutions (March 15, 2025).
• Withheld food from hungry Americans by pausing $500 million in Department of Agriculture emergency funding for food pantries nationwide (March 20, 2025).
• Cut $12 billion in Department of Health and Human Services grants to states for programs involving infectious disease tracking, addiction treatment, and mental health services— weakening already vulnerable public health services (March 26, 2025).
• Restricted equal opportunity for women service members by eliminating lower physical fitness standards for women in combat units (March 31, 2025).
• Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will make historic cuts to Medicaid and undermine the Affordable Care Act, stripping millions of American men and women of their healthcare coverage. Drastic cuts to Medicaid, along with a provision in the law that prohibits federal payments to Planned Parenthood, will disproportionately affect adult women, who make up 52 percent of the total Medicaid population (July 4, 2025).

The Controversy Surrounding Pete Hegseth

The topic of women’s health and liberty has reminded the country of the threats facing them under the second Trump Presidency. The United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth caught flak for reposting a video of pastors advocating for the stripping of a women’s right to vote.

This should unfortunately come as no surprise, as Hegseth’s own mother has denounced him as an abuser of women in similar fashion to the sexual abuse charges leveled against President Trump. The statement by Hegseth’s mother was as in an email correspondence acquired by The New York Times: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she said. “You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Hegseth’s views on women have been in the spotlight, especially after he faced multiple sexual assault allegations, though no charges were filed. Prior to his nomination to lead the Defense Department, Hegseth questioned the idea of women serving in combat roles in the military.

His reposting of the clip also pertains to Pastor Doug Wilson, a CREC co-founder and leader of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. Though typically media-friendly, Wilson is not a stranger to generating controversy with his church’s theology and its embrace of patriarchy and Christian nationalism. Pete Hegseth attended Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a CREC member church in a suburb outside Nashville, Tennessee. His pastor, Brooks Potteiger, prayed at a service that Hegseth hosted at the Pentagon.

A Generational Degrading of Women’s Strength in Society

Pastor Wilson’s church and his wider denomination proactive complementarianism, the patriarchal idea that men and women have different “God-given roles.” Women within the CREC churches are not allowed to hold church leadership positions, and married women are required to submit to their husbands. “Ordinarily, the vote is cast by the head of the household, the husband and the father,” Wilson said, though he added that the repealing of the 19th Amendment is not high on his list of priorities.

Wilson told the Associated Press that he believes that the 19th Amendment granting the right to vote “was a bad idea,” even though he has also said that his wife and daughters vote. He expressed that he would prefer that the US follow his church’s example, which allows the “heads of households,” in his case referencing men, that only they should vote in church election, with unmarried women qualifying as voting members in his church.

Pastor Wilson wants the US to be a Christian nation, and does not mind being called a Christian nationalist: “I am more than happy to work with that label because it's a better label than what I usually get called,” he said. “If I get called a white nationalist or a theo-fascist or a racist bigot, misogynist thug, I can’t work with them except to deny them.”

Wilson, a Navy veteran who served on submarines, expressed his disdain for women in the military as well: “I think we ought to find out the name of the person that we put women on those submarines and have that man committed,” he said. “It's like having a playpen that you put 50 cats in and then drop catnip in the middle of it. Whatever happens is going to be ugly.”

A reminder, US Christian Nationalism is a fusion of American and Christian identity, with principles and symbols that typically seek a privileged place for Christian people and ideas. Wilson contends that early America was Christian, though this is a notion which most historians dispute. American Christian nationalism involves overlapping movements, among them are evangelicals who views Donald Trump, a Republican, as a champion of their views who is influenced by Christian Reconstructionist ideas, a movement that sees politics as part of a larger “spiritual war,” as well as a Catholic postliberal movement envisioning a government endorsing traditional gender and race roles.

After Roe v. Wade Fell

The Dobbs decision allowed individual states to regulate or ban abortions, leading to an uneven and tumultuous patchwork across the US. In two new papers by researchers from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated that abortion bans in 14 states resulted in 22,180 additional live births and 478 additional infant deaths.

A national study found an average of 247 additional infant deaths per month following the Dobbs decision. There is a backlog of unreviewed maternal deaths in Texas which the state government has attempted to hide from the public. When it comes to the state of abortion access and basic health needs,

A study by Tulane researchers found that states with a more restrictive abortion policy climate had a 7% increase in total maternal mortality compared to states with fewer restrictions. The American Journal of Public Health analyzed that states requiring a licensed physician for abortion had a 51% higher total maternal mortality, and restrictions on state Medicaid funding for reproductive medicine were associated with a 29% higher maternal mortality.

Infant mortality is up 5.6% in states with abortion bans and restrictions— Reuters reports that an estimated extra 478 infant deaths that would otherwise not have occurred. Mortality increase is now greater for babies with congenital issues, black infants and Fertility rates are up in states with bans and restrictions.

There has been an increase in infant mortality rates in the US and particularly in states with abortion bans. Certain studies indicate that these bans have led to a rise in deaths among infants with congenital anomalies and in certain demographic groups like Black infants in southern states. States with abortion bans also have also experienced higher

Among the various ways that President Trump has put to use his party's ideological stance on women’s liberty and reproductive freedom and health, the Trump administration has ordered the destruction of nearly $9.7 million worth of contraceptives that were purchased for women in crisis overseas— instead of being sent overseas. Instead of being sent abroad, the supplies are set to be destroyed before August begins, resulting in a projected $167,000 cost to US taxpayers.

While a precise number for the lives affected by the overturning of Roe v. Wade is not fixed and archived, the available evidence from multiple authoritative sources indicates a concerning rise in maternal mortality and adverse health outcomes in states with abortion restrictions. This is attributed to factors like delayed or denied medical care due to legal confusion, a shrinking healthcare workforce, and the disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations.

Dozens of clinics that offered abortion services have closed since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Thousands of Women have been forced to experience pregnancies against their will, and thousands more have had to cross state lines and navigate legal hurdles to access the care that they need.

The unending quest to destroy access to abortion unleashed by the Dobbs right-wing majority has caused havoc: 21 states have implemented an abortion ban or severe abortion restrictions, several more states having bans that have been suspended by the courts in the past year. More than 36 million women of the legal reproductive age live in states where their ability and decision to have a child has also been limited by the federal government: analysis by the National Partnership finds that Black and Native American women are most likely to live in those states, as are disabled and financially insecure.

Birth control is a basic component of health care that the vast majority of women will use over the course of their lives. Nearly 9 in 10 women of reproductive age will use contraception at some point, with it for family planning or other medical reasons like treating endometriosis. Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s birth control provision went into effect, 1 in 3 women struggled to afford prescription birth control. Without insurance coverage, birth control pills can cost as much as $600 a year, with other methods costing even more.

The ACA helped to ensure that 62.4 million women had access to birth control by guaranteeing that it was covered in all health insurance plans, requiring that the plans women pay for include all of the health care that they need. Due to that, unintended pregnancy and birth complications were at a 30-year low and the rate of teenage pregnancy among teenagers was also at a historic low.

The Role of Project 2025

The role of “Project 2025” is to fundamentally change the culture of the nation by overwriting previously held privileges taken for granted by the populace that was achieved over the last half-century. Written by the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 other conservative groups to cement future conservative administrations, project 2025 is a wishlist of right-wing policies, reflecting an extreme Christian nationalist ideology.

In addition to being an effort to further empower the presidency and imbed conservative ideologues in nonpartisan civil service, it also aims to enable the executive branch to dismantle the gains of The Civil Rights Movement over the last seven decades. Project 2025, an agenda that is more than 900 pages long, aims to completely reshape the federal government.

Election workers have been already under threat, and under the policies of project 2025, the aforementioned administration would be permitted to criminalize election administration disputes. The project allows the termination of protections of online misinformation and disinformation relating to elections, where the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) ability to combat threats to election security would be scaled back. The 900-page manifesto would enact state and local recipients of DHS grant funding to meet certain pre-conditions for voter eligibility. The federal government would be allowed to access state voter rolls, and deploy aggressive purges of votes by voters that they have reason to suspect are "illegitimate."

Project 2025 defines the ability of federal agencies to become designated voter registration agencies in accordance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Former President Biden’s executive order “mission-creep,” was an order to adopt a “whole of government” approach to promoting voter registration and was strongly supported by civil rights groups, which had the potential of adding an estimated 3.5 million registered voters per year.

The constitution specifies that Congress and the states can set the rules for elections, not the President. On March 27th, a letter was sent to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) urging them not to take action in response to key provisions in Trump's executive orders to overhaul election security protections, as doing so would violate federal law.

Disparities in voting access between states is not a coincidence, and are not without consequence. The US, whether by law or practice, has never lived up to the ideals of a representative, inclusive, multi-racial democracy. The racism, sexism and ableism that created and maintained barriers for voters in the past continue to shape the electoral landscape of the present, undermining people’s political power by design.

Examples of tactics to undermine and manipulate voting can be found throughout the country’s history: In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that black people, free or enslaved, were not categorized as American citizens, including the freedom to vote. When that decision was nullified by the 14th and 15th amendments, the Supreme Court continued to rule in ways that enshrined white supremacy and racial segregation. During the Reconstruction Era, the Enforcement Acts that were passed between 1870 and 1871 criminalized voter suppression, and Black Americans were able to hold office in multiple levels of government. It was only until February 28, 1909, that women were finally allowed the right to vote.

Impact of the Save Act and Future Legislation

Recently, the House of Representatives passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on April 10, 2025. Republicans hailed the bill as a way to safeguard American elections from undocumented migrants voting. Critics warn that it could make voting even more difficult for legally eligible voters, which is especially true for tens of millions of married women who may not be able to provide the required documentation to prove their citizenship to register to vote. Legal experts also worry that the ambiguity in the bill will lead to uneven policies across the country, meaning some states and municipalities will enforce stricter document requirements than others.

The Act was introduced in response to fears about voter fraud, though research has shown that such incidents are quite rare and not a significant factor in American elections. Tracy Thomas, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Akron, said the issue is that court decrees are uncommon since they are generally not required for married individuals who want to change their names, though “Obtaining that marriage certificate is an additional cost, administrative burden and extra penalty that other voters do not have to do.”

Thomas teaches voting rights and general equality, and expressed concern for women even being able to acquire a marriage certificate, especially if they have been married for a long time, and their marriage certificate is not readily available. “These might all seem like trivial costs, but they all add up. There are also time delays and administrative inconvenience and burden at each step that creates more obstacles and discouragement to voting.”

Additionally, Keesha Middlemass, a professor in the department of political science at Howard University, added there will be longer time periods to identify where and how married women are being affected: “Will marriage certificates be accepted equally across all jurisdictions? We don’t know because some marriage certificates have different types of information on them,” she said. Middlemass also added that “The disenfranchisement— we won’t know about it until after the fact.”

Though it is not unusual for voting laws to take time to establish and settle issues for those affected, the prospect of sweeping changes to voter registration also comes at a time when elections—particularly midterms, have become more competitive. “ That happens with every policy, there’s always hiccups,” Middlemass explained. “The challenge with… changing voting laws is we’ve had very close elections in the last three cycles, and so if you reduce the potential voters by 1 or 2% that could change the outcome of the election.”

Long Ago in the Good ‘ol days

Presenting a birth certificate remains the easiest way to register under the SAVE act, however, many married women take their husband’s surnames and don’t have a birth certificate that matches their current legal names. Millions of American women could find themselves in the shoes of Ethel Mackenzie, an early 20th century suffragist. Like Mackenze could find their ability to register and vote hindered due to a congressional effort to prevent con-citizens from voting.

When Mackenzie tried to register to vote after California adopted women’s suffrage in 1911, she was shocked to learn that she still could not, even though she was born in the state. Due to the 1907 Expatriation Act, she couldn’t vote due to the fact that she was married to a non-citizen. Mackenzie’s own situation shows how nativist policies could harm not just immigrants, but also the rights of state-born American citizens, especially women.

In 1855, Congress passed the Naturalization Act, allowing any immigrant woman who married a citizen man to become a citizen herself, as long as she met the “racial requirements” for citizenship. In 1868, the 14th Amendment established birthright citizenship for all people born in the US except for Native Americans and the children of foreign diplomats. Today, many of the states in the US with a brutal Jim Crow Legacy continue to be the most difficult states for residents to vote today, especially in purging voters of color from election rolls under the guise of “fraud prevention” and adding new voter ID restrictions that have been found to disproportionately impact voter non-white voters.

For women specifically, though suffrage is commonly assumed to have been established in 1920 after decades of protest, black and other non-white women did not receive the ability to vote much later due to policies connected to their racial identity. Although the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote, women are still underrepresented in elected office and have yet to hold presidency.

American-born Native women were not granted citizenship or the basic right to vote until 1924, and that right wasn’t extended to Native Americans in every state in 1948. Federal policy denied citizenship and voting rights to immigrants of Asian descent until 1952, and for many women and communities of color, particularly Black women, the goal of equal voting rights only began with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Despite the history of uneven political and electoral power, the Supreme Court itself has undermined and gutted key voting provisions in recent years. One such is the court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, which released swaths of racist voter suppression from a requirement to clear any new election rules with the Department of Justice. That alone has opened the doors for regions with a history of discrimination to implement even newer, discriminatory laws without oversight.

Despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a gender pay gap still exists, particularly women of color. Challenges remain in achieving equal pay and representation in leadership roles. The gender pay gap, also known as the gender wage gap, refers to the difference in average earnings between men and women. In the US, women typically earn 83 cents for every dollar earned by men, with the disparity between race and ethnicity among non-white women being even wider.

Violence against women, such as in domestic and sexual violence is a rising issue: the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) provides resources to address these problems, but under the Trump administration, the President has decided to roll back protections and regulations for violence against women such as physical, financial, and emotional abuse. Additionally, Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education, increasing opportunities in academics and athletics. However, disparities persist in fields like STEM and leadership positions in education.

The Impact on Women’s Health and the unborn

The United States is on a Human Rights Watchlist now, so it should not come as a surprise that the state of women’s rights in particular is threatened. We are seeing rollbacks on human rights in general; the legacy of the first Trump presidency proved poor for reproductive rights and today, there are large swaths of the country where women and girls are prohibited and condemned from seeking abortion care.

Trump has pardoned individuals convicted of physically blocking or threatening violence against patients at reproductive health clinics. Trump’s views on what he calls “gender ideology,” a term that has been long used by opponents of women’s and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights, is based on a denial of the right to autonomy. Trump, who has a history of misconduct and abuse of women in particular, has doubled down in his party lines of traditional gender roles and obligations of submission. The new administration also sought to redefine sex as strictly male or female and fixed at birth. Jeopardizing access to education, healthcare, as well as other federally funded services for minorities of transgender citizens.

Due to the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling taking away the constitutional right to abortion— a ruling in which all three Trump-appointed justices voted with the majority and subsequently perjured themselves— the US is experiencing not just an added pain to a public health crisis, but a threat to human rights as well. Since that ruling, 17 states have banned abortion entirely or restricted it, leaving millions without care. Obstetricians are fleeing those states since they are no longer capable of properly caring for their patients— putting in danger those who do want to have children as well. Even women facing life-threatening pregnancy complications have suffered— maternal and infant deaths have increased since pregnant people are being forced to carry to term pregnancies with no chance of survival, even at the risk of their own health and fertility.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, President Trump’s presidency poses a threat to the democratic values of equality, liberty, the rule of law, and reproductive health, and human rights in the country and around the globe. Anti-rights extremists wielding the power to the detriment of more vulnerable populations are seeking to undermine decades of social and economic progress: according to Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the center, these factors are “a linchpin of what is the ability of individuals to make decisions about their reproductive lives and have access to reproductive health.”

The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal would go on to further cut the Health and Human Services (HHS) by more than 26 percent compared to 2025 fiscal year, including the shutting down of cancer screening and prevention programs. The HHS Division of Cancer Prevention and Control’s National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program has provided at least 16 million screening exams and has funded more than 50 cancer registries across different states to provide treatment and identify cancer trends and allocate resources more effectively.

These cuts to women’s pregnancy research will have an outsize impact on women of color. For example, the Division of Reproductive Health has been responsible for issuing contraceptive guidelines for patients with sickle cell disease, which disproportionately occurs in the Black Community. The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) was also closed down by the Trump administration, which tracked and measured progress on improving the health of women and infants at high risk for health issues for more than 35 years. Trump’s budget proposals would also eliminate funding for the state maternal mortality review committee, which reviews mortality data to inform recipients for preventing future pregnancy-related deaths.

Legacy of the Equal Rights Amendment

What could have been an inclusion to the constitution and a possible plateau for the start of better race and sex relations, The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), was delayed by a cadre of Republican women who did not want to alter the generational status quo. Phyllis Schalfly, a conservative activist and commentator, led a successful campaign against the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.

Schlafly was well known for her antagonism to gender equality; an advocate for honoring the “dignity of the homemaker,” Schlafly called the women’s liberation movement highly detrimental to US families. Schlafly believed that the ERA would hurt families and eliminate Social Security benefits for widows and homemakers— even though she herself earned a salary, Schlafly did not believe women should be in the paid workforce. Her position was that if women were to stay home and raise families, earning benefits of their own, Social Security was a necessity.

Another conservative concern was that the ERA would abolish a husband’s legal responsibility to support his wife and family and would alter child support and alimony laws to make them gender neutral. Overall, conservatives worried that the amendment would undermine the authority of men over women, which they saw as the “proper power relationship” for families.

There has been a long systematic process to this progress in human rights and representation. In the wake of the Civil War, the 13th Amendment eliminated enslavement, the 14th Amendment declared that no state could abridge the privileges of US citizens, and the 15th Amendment guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race. The feminists of the 1800s fought to have these amendments apply to all citizens, though the semantics of  14th Amendment extended to only men’s rights. In 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1920, giving women the right to vote; where the 14th Amendment, which says no privileges or immunities will be denied to male citizens regardless of race, the 19th Amendment protects only the voting privilege for women.

In 1923, Alice Paul wrote the “Lucretia Mott Amendment,” which said “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” It was introduced annually in Congress for many years— in the 1940s, she rewrote the Amendment as the “Alice Paul Amendment,” requiring “equal rights under the law” regardless of sex.

According to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the text contains as follows:

• Section 1: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
• Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provision of this article.
• Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

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The National Organization for Women (NOW) led the struggle to pass the ERA as the deadline neared. The League of Women Voters, the YMCA of the US, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the United Auto Workers (UAW), the National Education Association (NEA), and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) supported the amendment’s passage as well.

The ERA passed the US Senate and House of Representatives in 1972, with Congress including a seven-year deadline for ratification by three-fourths of the states, which is at least 38 of the 50 states that had to ratify by 1979. After the death of Alice Paul in 1977, Congress extended the deadline to 1982, though nothing was done about it. The Republican Party removed support for the ERA from its platform; despite increased civil disobedience, demonstrations, and marches, advocates were unable to get an additional three states to ratify.

Ultimately, the ERA is just sitting around waiting for the time Congress wakes up: the potential amendment was not added to the Constitution because it did not receive the required number of state ratifications by the deadline. Advocates for civil rights continue to work towards the ERA’s adoption, arguing that it is crucial for ensuring full equality for all Americans.

Now What?

There is a coalition of voting rights organizations that filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Colombia to challenge President Trump's executive order on voting that attempts to seize the power to set voter registration rules from Congress and the States. The president doing so would violate the federal law and the constitution if carried out by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC)— provisions of Trump's order could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, especially voters of color, women naturalized citizens, first-time voters, low-income, and those with disabilities.

The coalition, League of Women Voters, released a joint statement:

“The president has no constitutional or statutory authority to unilaterally dictate how elections are run. This executive order is a blatant violation of the separation of powers. Election rules are decided by Congress and the states, and any attempt by the executive branch to override their power violates the Constitution. This order, based on a persistent false and radicalized narrative, could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. It mirrors the SAVE Act, which would add unnecessary barriers to voter registration and silence the voices of American citizens. These unlawful attacks on voting rights are part of a broader effort to undermine our democracy. We have filed suit to stop this executive order from keeping it from interfering with eligible voters’ participations in our elections.”