Rachna Mohan (’25)

Last Sunday, President Biden’s somewhat unsurprising resignation, given the astronomical pressure from party leaders to do so after a lackluster performance in the first presidential debate, re-ignited the presidential race. Before his resignation, many voters, including staunch Democrats, were convinced Trump’s bid to run for re-election would end in victory. However, President Biden’s ceremonious gesture to “put the country first” may have been the biggest blessing, reawakening American women to ask the question: America, is the purpose of being a woman to make babies?

In the hours after, Biden and many Democrats endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic nominee for the presidential ticket, a historic feat. Harris, a woman of mixed ancestry – Jamaican and Indian – prosecutor, Senator, mother, and not the first or last person to be biologically childless, is taking massive heat. 

The opposition having no problem chucking that – though she does have two step-children – in her face continues the farce of being a red-meat, red-state, and “pro-family” kind of party. Still, I must say that it is stooping to new lows even for them and is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. 

JD Vance, Trump’s chosen Vice President, in many interviews, constantly undermines and devalues women who are childless, a large group actually: around one in six American women 40 to 44 have never had children. Vance, quick to degrade, calls powerful modern women like Harris and A.O.C “childless cat ladies” while questioning “why we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” 

These comments come at a time when the United Kingdom, India and Mexico to name a few have had female Prime Ministers, clearly we can begin to feel something is wrong here: we are not with the times. 

So, does that mean the only way women can have a stake in America is if they have children? 

And more importantly what kind of message does that send out? 

I’ll tell you what kind: the kind in Atwood’s dystopian Gilead, contingent on reproductive female fitness. Let me remind you we are already living this manifesto. They have already overturned Roe v. Wade, they are coming after the contraceptive pill and I.V.F, and they are significantly curtailing spending on federal adoption programs and state programs benefiting mothers and children.  

Mothers come in all forms, but the principal trait is compassion, which many lawmakers on the hill clearly lack.

For a party that prides itself on the nuclear family, to have Trump married thrice and boast a bucket of children from his different wives is somewhat ironic. 

If he can choose to have Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany, Donald Jr., and Barron, then the women of America can, too. 

Never has a man had to justify why he has a stake, so why should a woman? 

The decision to have children, especially in this current climate, is a private and sanctimonious event that should be the sole choice of the mother; after all, she will be the one to feed, nurse, and raise this child – not Vance or Trump. 

Young women, let me tell you, you are not made to only reproduce; you are meant to have a stake because we contribute to society in meaningful childless ways, and we have come too far to surrender to dystopia. 

America, we – all women – still have a stake and we will grip it until our hands turn cold and our children grow tall.