Donald Trump’s favorite word when talking about abortion bans is “beautiful.” When Trump was asked on Fox News in June about the states that passed abortion bans after his Supreme Court nominees overturned Roe v. Wade, Trump declared that “it’s beautiful to watch.” He claims to be the “protector” of women and recently told women that they will “stop thinking about abortion” if he is elected because “women’s lives will be happy and beautiful.”

We were reminded again this week of what Trump’s “protection” of women looks like in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended nearly half a century of abortion rights, which was only possible as Trump made good on his 2016 promise to appoint judges who opposed Roe v. Wade. On Wednesday, ProPublica reported on the deaths of two Texas women who were denied hospital miscarriage care because that standard of care for failed pregnancies is banned under Texas’ draconian abortion law. The Washington Post also reported this week about a Nevada woman who was charged with manslaughter after mourning a miscarriage on Facebook.

While one of the two deceased women in Texas is still unknown, Josseli Barnica’s family spoke with ProPublica. The 28-year-old mother was pregnant with her second child when she suffered a miscarriage at 17 weeks. Unable to remove the dying fetus, doctors stood by helplessly due to Texas law as Barnica grew sicker from an infection over the days and eventually died. The case is similar to that of Georgia, where 28-year-old Amber Thurman and 41-year-old Candi Miller died after being unable to receive post-abortion care due to that state’s ban. In Nevada, 26-year-old Patience Frazier was arrested after she miscarried a fetus she named “Abel.” Authorities claimed she deliberately terminated her pregnancy, but medical experts say her method – eating a bunch of cinnamon – cannot cause a miscarriage.

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Despite being the person most responsible for the deaths of Barnica, Miller and Thurman, Trump continues to call himself a “protector” of women. On Wednesday, he told a crowd in Wisconsin that he will “protect” women whether the women like it or not. It is confusing for normal people to use the attitude and language of a violent threat when claiming to ‘protect’ women. But with Trump, it kind of makes sense, even beyond his history as a serial sexual attacker. In MAGA parlance, “protect” is a dog whistle for their true intentions for women: domination.

The word reflects a larger tendency on the part of Trump and his followers to see women not as people, but as the property of men, especially powerful white men. As journalist Kelly Weill recently argued, the MAGA worldview views the family as “a sexualized project of male domination.” In this view, women should be ‘protected’ from outsiders who might want to rape them, but only because it is a property crime against their male owner. But a father or husband has a free hand to dispose of his female property as he pleases. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson repeatedly expressed this by saying that sexual abuse of minors is not really serious if the father first married them off to the rapist.

“I’m just telling you that arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old and a 27-year-old is not the same as pulling a stranger off the street and raping her. That’s bt,” Carlson said… The criminal charges that Carlson called “bt” stemmed from the case of a 14-year-old girl who (Warren) Jeffs forced into marrying an adult cousin. The girl testified that her husband regularly raped her and that she survived several miscarriages.

MAGA doesn’t care about women and girls who die because of abortion bans. Those who die from illegal abortions are seen as people who reject patriarchal authority and deserve death. But even in the cases of those who miscarry and do not receive medical care, there is not much care. That makes sense if you view women less as people and more as property. A woman having a miscarriage and needing medical care is, in this worldview, much like a malfunctioning device. Might as well throw it away and buy another one that doesn’t require as much maintenance.

In these four cases, the women also fall outside the narrow zone of “protection” that Trump imagines because of their racial identity or class status. Miller and Thurman were black and Barnica was an immigrant from Honduras. Frazier was, as the Washington Post documented, impoverished and often homeless. The deputy who arrested her knew her from around town and compared Frazier to “her own mother, who she said often left her five children to fend for themselves in a drug-infested neighborhood.”

But even white, middle-class women need to know that they are not safe. A number of such women – such as Amanda Zurawski and Kate Cox from Texas – have spoken about their own horrific experiences of being denied care for failed pregnancies, which left Zurawski so badly injured that she will likely never give birth. Better off white women are certainly more valued in the MAGA worldview, but they are still objects judged based on how well they serve the patriarchal system. Because they fail to be ‘good’ in pregnancy, they are seen as low functioning and not worthy of care. By speaking out, they have become rebellious women who are condemned for their boldness. Anti-abortion leaders relentlessly demonize these women, calling them liars or worse.

Trump continues to deny that he wants a national abortion ban, but the safe bet is that if he wins in November, there will be a national abortion ban. First of all, Trump lies about everything all the time, so his denials on this front are worthless – more important is his unwillingness to veto any abortion ban that a Republican Congress would pass. But even if Republicans don’t control Congress, Project 2025 outlines a plan to ban abortion pills through the back door by revoking their FDA approval. Even if Trump wins, he will lose the majority of female voters, likely by a wide margin. He is a hateful misogynist, and banning abortion nationwide will simply feel like his “revenge” on women who rejected his “protection.”