Admirers of the new president, especially those opposed on moral grounds to facilitating abortion, will doubtless see the image as evidence of Trump’s unflinching determination to act even in the face of robust opposition. Detractors, however, are likely to continue seeing the image, absent of any female counsel, as evidence of subverted democracy, as flagrantly obtuse to the perspective of those affected by the order as the American artist John Trumbull’s 1819 depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That famous painting, which has featured on official US stamps and currency notes, proudly portrays scores of white men, including many slaveholders, un-ironically congratulating themselves on pronouncing the equality and “inalienable rights” of all people.

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