I think that we can agree that there are no depths to which Donald Trump will not sink so we should no longer be really surprised when he does something that is appalling. But one thing really grates on me and that is when he, on issues that we can be sure that he does not really care that much about, goes out of his way to harm people purely because he now realizes that it will please his slowly shrinking core of supporters, the ones he needs to attend his rallies and feed his ego, and anger his opponents, which pleases his base even more.

For example, you can be pretty certain that Trump does not care that much about contraception or abortion or LGBT rights but that if he did care then, given that he moved in the wealthy circles of New York City, he would likely casually favor them, to the extent that he thought of them at all. But now that he is president, he seems to go out of his way to undermine them for the reasons given above.

An example of this is his administration’s latest move to ban abortions for all undocumented immigrants, following a case when the DC circuit court overruled the government and allowed a woman to do so and she went ahead.

They’re also asking that, in the future, the federal government be empowered to block other undocumented pregnant women from seeking abortion care.

As it stands, the girl known as Jane Doe was forced to wait an additional four weeks in order to obtain an abortion—a legal medical procedure—that she planned on paying for out-of-pocket. Abortions that occur in the second trimester are more complicated, costly, and run a higher risk of complications than the early abortion that Doe initially sought.
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In response to the filing, ACLU director David Cole released the following statement: “This administration has gone to astounding lengths to block this young woman from getting an abortion. Now, because they were unable to stop her, they are raising baseless questions about our conduct. Our lawyers acted in the best interest of our client and in full compliance with the court orders and federal and Texas law. That government lawyers failed to seek judicial review quickly enough is their fault, not ours.”

“We won’t let this distract us from the real issue here, which is that there are many more young women like Jane Doe out there who are still unable to get the care they need because of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional policies. We will not stop fighting until we have justice for every young woman like Jane.”

The sheer pettiness of this move can be gauged by how few cases this really represents. And given the Trump administration’s concerns about undocumented immigrant women giving birth in the US and thus the babies becoming citizens, you might think that they would favor such women having abortions.

But Trump has to keep providing red meat to the social conservative beast that he is now chained to and anything that he can toss to them, however petty, will do if it keeps the animal from turning on him.