The Supreme Court's ruling upholding birthright citizenship has triggered a wave of extreme proposals from MAGA figures aimed at restricting pregnant women from entering the United States, and one writer argued Monday that the reaction revealed something deeper about the movement's psychology.
Sarah Posner, an author and journalist for Talking Points Memo, spoke to what she considered to be MAGA figures’ increasing desire to “control” women on The New Republic's "Daily Blast" podcast, pointing to a series of proposals from prominent MAGA figures since the ruling, including denying entry to pregnant or female foreigners and requiring sterilization before entry.
Posner said that the proposals weren’t a new development so much as an escalation of a long-standing obsession – and fear.
"MAGA has always been very interested in policing women's bodies, whether it's preventing them from having an abortion, preventing them from accessing birth control, or in this case, preventing them from being in the United States when they go into labor," Posner said.
"You have a movement that's at its core disgusted by women's bodies. And that's why they want to control them."
Posner connected the proposals to the movement's broader anti-immigrant rhetoric, and described how officials have framed immigrant women – and women generally – as "conniving, dirty" and intent on defrauding the country. She also argued that those floating the extreme proposals were doing so to appease President Donald Trump.
"They have to coddle their little baby fascist president who just lost a case at the Supreme Court," Posner said. “So they have to show that they are really coming up with other ways to ensure that no foreigner has a baby in the United States anymore, despite the Supreme Court decision.”