Mansplaining Feminism by Opus Dei
“What we call feminism is the attempt to flee both of the punishments handed to Eve: the pain of procreation and the pain of turning to men for approval and self-esteem.”
If you're thinking this sounds like the archaic muttering of some 19th century monk, think again. These words were spoken by the patriarchal Vicar of Opus Dei in 2017. Opus Dei is a prelature within the Roman Catholic Church. It is more accurately described as a political project cloaked in spirituality. Its adherents are “militia seeking battle against the enemies of Christ." This is no gentle Christ. This is authoritarian dogma—Opus Dei style.
Sound familiar?
The Opus Dei ideology dovetails with the “conservative promise” of Project 2025—a blueprint for dictating moral standards and undermining the U.S. Constitution to enforce them. As a secretive organization, Opus Dei does not publicly disclose its membership lists. Their policy is neither to confirm nor deny an individual’s membership. But connections with some of the most conservative power players—Supreme Court justices, politicians like JD Vance, and Christian nationalist, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation—are undeniable. Roberts has deep ties with Opus Dei dating back to high school. He is the architect behind Project 2025 and frequents the Catholic Information Center on lobby-friendly K Street in Washington, D.C., a well-known Opus Dei hotspot.
So what? Freedom of religion is baked into the U.S. Constitution, as is the separation of church and state. But there's the rub: Kevin Roberts is free to worship, but he is not free to impose his religious beliefs on the rest of us. Nor are conservative justices. Nor is JD Vance. Yet, their ultimate aim is to force a moral code on every American. Their moral code.
Your moral code is wrong if it’s not our moral code.
That’s the threat we face just weeks before the election. If Trump wins, and Project 2025 gains traction—despite Trump’s feigned ignorance of it—neither Congress, blue state legislation, nor blue state constitutions will stop it. Trump crushed democratic norms in his first term, but with Project 2025 and the conservative Supreme Court majority behind him this time, Trump poses an existential threat to democracy. Preeminent constitutional scholar, Laurence Tribe, warns of an "imperial judiciary walking arm in arm with an imperial executive." All guardrails of democracy? Struck down.
Subjugating Women by Project 2025
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022 laid the groundwork for Project 2025 obsession with telling women what they can and cannot do. While the Court pretended to return decisions about abortion back to the states, Project 2025’s strategists knew better. It was a malicious ruse. Women have lost their lives. Needlessly. Senselessly.
Not content with Dobbs results, Project 2025 has been working behind the scenes for the past two years crafting an airtight instruction manual for subjugating women nationwide.
Instruction Manual for Subjugating Women
Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise, Chapter 14—The Department of Health and Human Services, by Roger Severino, pages 449-502
According to the Chapter 14 author, Roger Severino, the Department of Health and Human Services will change its name to “The Department of Life.” Clever. The name change is cynical at best. Health and human services have become so entwined with the issue of reproductive rights that Project 2025 is simply going to erase all mention of it. In its place: a command-and-control regime over women’s bodies administered by the newly appointed Secretary of Life.
States Will Be Powerless
The brilliance—or cruelty—of Project 2025 lies in its foresight. They are anticipating and plan to outmaneuver every challenge from reproductive rights advocates. No blue state laws will be exempt from abortion bans. No state constitution will protect against abortion bans. Moderate Republicans, independents, and undecided voters who believe Trump’s latest lie are being duped.
Trump has been struggling to cultivate support and votes among MAGA women. So at a rally on Monday this week in Indiana Pennsylvania he promised.
“You will be protected, and I will be your protector…Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free.”
Bullshit. [A common law legal term]
There will be no reproductive freedom in a Trump administration. There will be none in a future JD Vance Administration. Freedoms and rights will be restricted for the many. Reserved for the few. That is authoritarianism. Project 2025 is marshaling its forces.
Project 2025 has already vetted a militia of more than 20,000 loyalists to replace up to 50,000 targeted career civil servants within the first 180 days in a Trump 2.0 administration. The aim? Correct the mistakes made in Trump 1.0. Turn the "deep state" into a machine. Pass extremist policies. Shut down agencies that cross Trump’s agenda. Unleashed, the newly-minted Secretary of Life will stifle any discussion of reproductive rights. If Trump wins in November, it’s game over. Abortion bans will be nationalized. Blue states be damned.
Here’s how:
1. Nationalize Fetal Personhood: Fetal personhood will be argued before the Supreme Court and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, overriding state laws—even those protecting abortion rights. Trump-appointed judges will agree that from the moment of fertilization, a zygote is entitled to equal protection and due process under the law. The G.O.P. platform nods to the theory that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution recognizes fetal rights. Prominent anti-abortion groups have called on the Supreme Court to hold that liberal abortion laws violate federal fetal rights. It doesn't matter that more and more preventable maternal deaths are being reported as women are denied emergency health care. Healthcare providers be damned. The government will decide the fate of women.
2. Forbid In Vitro Fertilization (IVF): Extremist lawyers will argue that IVF violates embryonic rights. In a MAGA-driven decision, Republicans recently voted down the "Right to IVF Act." Again. For the second time this year. They know exactly what they’re doing. They are planning for a future where a fertilized egg has equal rights under the law. And no state can "trump" it. How does that make women happy, healthy, confident and free by their protector, Trump?
3. Impose The 1868 Comstock Act: Project 2025’s Cabinet Secretary of Life in conjunction with allies in the Food & Drug Administration will rescind its 2000 approval of miphepristone, effectively removing it from the national market. Then in conjunction with loyalists in the Department of Justice, the Secretary will enforce the 156-year-old law, which prohibits the mailing of abortion-related materials, including abortion pills. Boom. A de facto national ban on medication abortions, even in states where abortion remains legal.
4. But Wait! Project 2025 Has More Ways to Undermine Women’s Agency:
Prohibit abortion travel funding and punish abortion travel
Defund Planned Parenthood.
Rewrite the ACA abortion regulations.
Audit Hyde Amendment compliance.
Reverse “distorted pro-abortion interpretations” added to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act [EMTALA]
Remove the week-after-pill from the contraceptive mandate.
Report every abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, and incidental pregnancy loss from medical treatments.
Monitor period-tracking apps and report all pregnancy losses
5. Plus, A Heteronormative Chaser: The Secretary of Life will declare that men and women are biological realities essential to society, and that the "ideal" family structure is a married man and woman raising their biological children. Blended families? Non-traditional families? Marginalized and vulnerable communities. Under attack.
This is an authoritarian vision Viktor Orbán would applaud. In Trump’s America, Project 2025 will complete the subjugation of women, restricting women’s agency to theocratic, Christian nationalist standards. The agenda is clear. It says just that on page 481 of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership.
“Maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family.”
Is this something we want for our democratic republic? A country where individual rights are trampled by authoritarian bigots? Early voting is already underway in several states. Last minute voting could be in jeopardy. The Republican National Committee has pulled resources from Trump’s presidential campaign. They know they can’t win on policy. Instead, they are investing in voter suppression efforts before the election. And they are threatening anti-democratic election tactics. Brennan Center for Justice President Michael Waldman writes: “This year, around the country, rogue local election officials are increasingly threatening to withhold certification of results, based on no evidence of impropriety whatsoever, cheered on by hordes of online election deniers.”
At 78 years old, Trump will soon be sidelined for one reason or another. His brand of politics as an entertainer and clown will come to and end. But his chosen vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, and his influencers have publicly expressed doubts about democracy. What is JD’s obsession with women and their reproductive choices? Is it to build a nation of authoritarian warriors? An army of God? Is it control? Ego? Vance is not an entertaining clown. He is a puppeteer. And he has decades to pull the strings of oppression whether he does so democratically or not.
Final Kick
Mark Twain tells us “there is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.” We got our first swift kick from Dobbs. We will learn nothing from another kick from Project 2025. If they succeed, they will dictate how we live, how we love, and how we govern our own bodies—for years to come.
The Project 2025 mule is bucking. Get its ass in the corral. Defeat Trump. Decisively.
Phyllis is winning after all and we can’t let that ever happen!