Allies of Donald Trump are saying they want to ban pregnant people (who are not U.S. citizens) from entering the U.S. This includes tourists, business travelers, students, people responding to family emergencies, and more. This is such a preposterous idea, it is almost laughable - except for how truly vile and evil it is.
Sign the petition to demand that members of Congress refuse to pass legislation banning pregnant people from entering the U.S.!This idea comes from right-wing groups like The Federalist media outlet, but has now gained footholds with prominent members of the government. For example, high-profile politician
Rep. Mike Johnson - the Speaker of the House - is now seriously considering the idea. As the Speaker, he is the highest-ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the second in line of succession for the Presidency, after the Vice President.
Stephen Miller, one of Trump's chief advisors, has also said he would take "a hard look" at the anti-pregnancy proposal. The CEO of The Federalist,
Sean Davis, went even further by outright advocating for the government to
"require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry."Why are they suddenly interested in knowing intimate reproductive details about foreign national visitors to the U.S.? It's tied to
Trump's allies' xenophobia and associated hatred of birthright citizenship. On Trump's first day back in office, he issued an executive order to undo birthright citizenship, which is a Constitutionally protected right. In June,
the Supreme Court declared that Trump's executive order violated the Constitution's 14th Amendment. So now, Trump's team is looking for
new ways to prevent the children of non-citizens from being citizens themselves.The 14th Amendment is phenomenally important to the country's history. In 1868, following the end of the U.S. Civil War, the 14th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution. Among other things, it clarified and confirmed that all people who are born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens. This was an attempt to address a long history of
Black people in the U.S. being denied the rights of citizenship and denied their basic humanity.
So there is no non-racist way to reverse birthright citizenship. And Trump's allies' latest plan of preventing citizenship for children makes it clear how odious this obsession is. As of the writing of this petition, the Care2 team is not aware of any other country on planet Earth that fully bans pregnant people from visiting. The level of control this would imply is shocking. As Katie O'Connor with the National Women's Law Center
explained, it's "really dangerous" to consider giving the federal government access to medical data about pregnancy.
It's also not clear how border control could ever possibly enforce this.
Would they make every single person take a pregnancy test before getting off a plane? What about false positives or false negatives? Who would be collecting and managing this data? It's not only wildly xenophobic - it's also catastrophically stupid.
Speaker Mike Johnson would be foolish and wrong to introduce such legislation into Congress. But if he does, we have to encourage elected representatives to immediately reject any such bill! Sign the petition! 