This is happening within the larger context of state attacks on reproductive rights and the right’s focus on creating the perfect conditions for its ideal heterosexual, cisgender, and white family with multiple kids, culminating in efforts such as the Heritage Foundation’s “culture-wide Manhattan Project.” In its report detailing this vision, the conservative think tank uses the term “natural family” to describe the family resulting from a married, monogamous man and woman and claims all others have been proven “inferior,” on average, “across space and time.” The report shows the nonmarital birth rate for Black women in the 1960s as it makes this argument for policies that favor these households over single parents, queer relationships, and cohabitating partners.
The policy document also details many of the gripes conservatives have with no-fault divorce, which does not require that marriages are dissolved through a showing of wrongdoing by either party. The authors list no-fault divorce as an obstacle to their goals of returning to traditional family life, bemoaning “the increased risk of marriage being ended unilaterally” and “perverse incentives” created by financial protections for spouses who “earned little to no money during the marriage.” Despite the report focusing so clearly on family life, the authors didn’t note in that paragraph what these spouses, many of them women, often do contribute—childcare and management of the home that allowed the primary breadwinner to avoid paying someone outside of the home for all of those services for many years.
The approach that the Trump administration has taken in its health policy complements the misogynistic, white supremacist, and anti-queer project that this report outlines. It is hard to leave your spouse when you’re pregnant—it’s a time when many pregnant people see abuse start or worsen, when you are physically or mentally unwell. People with disabilities are often at higher risk for abuse by their partners, and pregnant people often experience short-term disability because of conditions created by pregnancy, which is only made worse by a lack of access to pain relief and untreated mental health issues. Making it harder for pregnant people to be as comfortable as possible in pregnancy creates challenges for them to maintain employment, which provides financial independence and a path to exit abusive relationships. Taken as a whole, the views and policies of this administration and their allies are a multipronged effort to disempower pregnant people and leave them as dependent as possible on their partners, some advocates say.
