'It's terrifying... Trump's America gets more like The Handmaid's Tale every day'

Nearly 100 days after the fertilisation president’ came to power, women in the US are increasingly alarmed at his administration’s obsession with their bodies

- Anna Hart

When Donald Trump told a room full of women assembled at the White House, "I'll be known as the fertilisation president", it brought many chilling things to mind. This is a man who boasted on Access Hollywood that women let him “grab ’em by the pussy”, who has taken credit for overturning Roe v Wade while abruptly removing access to contraception across the world, and supports a deputy who derided women in positions of power in the US as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”.

And now the president was boasting about some vague policies to increase access to IVF. “We’re going to have tremendous, tremendous goodies in the bag for women, too; the women between the fertilisation and all of the other things that we’re talking about,” he said, at an event to mark Women’s History Month.

“It’s going to be, it’s going to be great,” he assured the room, with his trademark delivery of an overripe and incoherent game show host. Adding: “I’ll be known as the fertilisation president, that’s not bad, that’s not bad. I’ve been called much worse. Actually, I like it, right? I like it.”

Improved access to expensive fertilisation treatment would normally be something to be celebrated, but many American women feel far from “great” about Trump’s treatment of women’s bodies. As Chloe, a 35-year-old teacher living in Park Slope in Brooklyn puts it, “It feels absolutely terrifying to be a woman in America right now, but women are supposed to be grateful for this extra opportunity to bring a child into this mess? America under Trump gets more like The Handmaid’s Tale every day.”

On her February trip to Australia, Chloe stocked up on a year’s worth of the contraceptive pill to bring back to the US. “We just don’t know what will change next in the US regarding women’s reproductive rights,” she says.

Having spent the past four months based in New York,