Women’s march fallout: Is Trump out for revenge?

‘Men and women think differently’ – So they say. ‘Men are rational. Women are emotional. Thinking gets in the way. That’s why it’s better to leave the thinking to the rational men.’

It’s one of those alternative truths that have been holding women back for years.

And it wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn’t for the fact, that the opposite is the case.

Pigeon-chested men, with comb-over haircuts, have been playing-up for centuries, running amok and ruining things.

Meanwhile, clear-thinking women have been picking-up the pieces, protesting peacefully, getting things done. The problem was, there never was a scientific experiment to prove this, if you don’t count world wars.

So the myth lived on – but that was before Donald Trump.

Now we have an emotional thinker in charge of a superpower, a man who is set to reverse the myth in probably the only sex-equality measure that will come from his time in office.

Pointless though this will be, set against the raft of other reversals he will make to women’s rights.

By the time females across the globe can turn around and say ‘I told you so’ their dreams of breaking through the glass ceiling will have been replaced by a shattered pelvic floor.

Following the inauguration, it took just a few days for the evidence to surface.

POTUS Trump’s reaction to seeing millions of women across the globe marching for equal rights? (Stealing his thunder, with a show of populist momentum.)

Punish them. Make those bitches pay. Starting with the weakest.

Immediately, he reinstated the abortion-funding ban aimed directly at the poorest women around the world.

Sending out a clear message to female protestors – If they were going to take him on, he was going to take them out.

This Executive Order is known as the global gag rule, because it prohibits federal-funded American aid organisations from making a case for abortion in poor countries.

Reagan first stopped talk of abortion this way in 1984 as part of a ‘Mexico City Policy’.

Evidence showed that it leads to maternal deaths and deprived millions of women access to safe birth control.

Ironically, silencing the discussion backfired, leading to increased abortion rates. In other words, a non-fact based ruling, led to an emotionally-charged solution, to a challenging problem that required the opposite rationale.

Let’s turn to the facts.

Fact: Not talking about abortion and family planning causes more problems than it solves, especially in poorer countries.

Fact: Abortions will increase.

Fact: More women will die as a result.

It’s an example of the kind of thinking that goes: If you don’t like something, make it go away.

Immature. Stupid. Emotional.

Marie Stopes International, estimates the forfeiture of services will cause 6.5 million unintended pregnancies, 2.2 million abortions, 2.1 million unsafe abortions and 21,700 maternal deaths in Trump’s first term.

They say they will be prevented from reaching 1.5 million women with contraception every year.

When Sean Spicer, Trump’s White House press secretary explained the new ban, he made a false statement about what the global gag rule does.

Spicer claimed the global gag rule will ‘end the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions overseas along with coercive abortion and sterilisation practices’.

But this is an alternative truth – or, simply, just not true.

The global gag rule is not the only anti-abortion law to come out of Washington. There is already a policy in place that does this called The Helms Amendment, which has banned foreign aid from being used for this purpose since 1973.

However, the global gag goes one further, by controlling how international organisations use their own funds, raised from other sources.

It’s an unnecessarily spiteful measure symptomatic of zealous logic. Forcing NGOs that provide abortions to stop promoting them, or face the consequences of losing US support for other medical services.

Although the funding ban does not affect the rights of American women seeking abortions, it marks the beginning of a domestic march backwards by several decades. Trump commented during his election campaign that women who have abortions should be punished – this is not an idle threat. He has promised to appoint Supreme Court judges who would overturn the landmark Roe versus Wade ruling of 1973, which legalised abortion nationwide.

Looking into the thousand-yard-stare of First Lady Melania Trump, it’s hard not to think this is a pattern of behaviour she might have warned the marchers to look out for.

Rather like the older woman carrying one the best banners on the march which read: ‘I can’t believe I still have protest this f***ing s***.’

The message is clear. Hold on to your pink pussy hats, the worst is yet to come.

Emma Jones was a showbiz reporter for, among others, The Sun and editor of Smash Hits magazine