Even as we’ve witnessed unprecedented national conversation around police brutality this year, conservatives are, yet again, working to expand the unchecked power of police and increase our reliance on a violent criminal justice system. And this time they’re doing it with a bill that would have devastating consequences for rape survivors.

This summer, Representatives Matt Salmon (R-AZ), Pete Sessions (R-TX), and Kay Granger (R-TX) introduced the Safe Campus Act, a bill that would, among other requirements, preclude universities from disciplining students who sexually assault their classmates, unless the victims go to the police first. Their so-called Safe Campus Act is actually a misnomer: The bill, which is currently in the House Education and Workforce Committee, would make campuses dramatically less safe than they already are.

Very few survivors, particularly those on college campuses, choose to report sexual violence to the police. Many victims are assaulted by friends or intimate partners and, for many of these students, turning those individuals over to the cops isn’t a viable option. For others who are undocumented, gender nonconforming, or of color, going to the police often means risking suffering more violence, like deportation, police brutality, or criminalization themselves. For still others, struggling to stay in school in the wake of debilitating sexual violence is more than a full-time job; it isn’t possible to withstand the burden of a lengthy public trial. And yet more survivors know what the Safe Campus Act authors apparently don’t: that the criminal system almost never delivers justice to survivors who want to see their attacker found guilty or incarcerated. Despite the confident assertions by supporters of this bill that only the police are qualified to handle sexual assault, only three in every 100 rapists ever spend a day in jail because police and prosecutors fail to properly investigate cases or choose not to bring charges against an assailant. Survivors understandably fear retaliation for trying to press charges against perpetrators who will, most likely, remain in their communities.

The Safe Campus Act would trample Title IX, the decades-old civil rights law that requires equal access to educational opportunities to students of all genders. Because being raped by the guy who sits next to you in math class creates a barrier to your ability to learn, Title IX requires schools who receive federal funding to address gender violence as a civil rights violation and to remedy its effects, in order to ensure all students can access their right to education. That can mean offering a victim free counseling services, moving them out of a class shared with their attacker, or providing an extension on a paper due the week after the assault. It can also mean disciplining their assailant or removing them from campus—but under the Safe Campus Act, this would be forbidden unless the survivor goes to the police.

The Safe Campus Act’s proponents claim that universities aren’t equipped to discipline students for rape because it’s a criminal act. But schools regularly hold students accountable for all sorts of disciplinary violations that, in a court, would be considered crimes: drug possession, theft, racial harassment, physical assault. Sexual violence isn’t exceptional. These are all common violations—some with real human victims—that schools investigate and address, regardless of whether the victim calls the cops.

The Safe Campus Act’s added reporting burden for rape victims is of a piece with antiquated rape laws from the 1970s and 1980s—laws that required prompt complaint, utmost resistance from victims, and independent corroboration. They made proving rape more burdensome than any other crime. It’s not hard to figure out the reason for the similarity. As my friend Dana Bolger said when quoted in a piece for Vice, “It’s clear that what’s animating the bill’s authors’ concern here isn’t the violence per se but the people who typically experience it—women—and the special skepticism our society reserves for them ….  Why else would we be okay with schools punishing students who commit physical assault but not students who commit sexual assault?” In other words, this bill reinforces the idea that victims—usually women—are hysterical liars, not to be trusted with our own experiences unless we can secure the backing of law enforcement.

But the bill isn’t just sexist; it’s dangerous too. As deputy director of Know Your IX, I hear every day from student survivors who say that, were the police further enmeshed in the campus process, they’d report to no one at all. A survey of student survivors that Know Your IX conducted with the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence confirmed that further involving the police will dramatically decrease reporting to schools, leaving perpetrators free to roam campuses with impunity.

I suspect that the Safe Campus Act’s supporters don’t care much about those consequences.

The bill is backed by a disturbing coalition of supporters, many of whom are far-right and have proven anti-woman agendas. Two of the Safe Campus Act’s sponsors voted against the Violence Against Women Act’s reauthorization in 2013, and all three voted to restrict women’s reproductive health care and defund Planned Parenthood in 2015. Two prominent national fraternity organizations publicly endorsed the bill in a joint letter and are advocating heavily for its passage. And the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a civil liberties organization that often advocates for accused rapists and pushes against policies that make it easier to report harassment and violence, has publicly lauded the bill, calling for its passage. When questioned by Congressman Jeffries during a recent House committee hearing about police abuse and skepticism of rape victims, Joseph Cohn, FIRE’s legislative and policy director, asserted that there “is no way to build up more trust with police than to work with them.” Could any comment be more seemingly oblivious to the national conversation around police brutality and mistreatment?

In contrast, advocacy groups and service providers who work directly on issues of sexual violence have unanimously spoken out against the SCA. In statements provided to the Huffington Post, 28 victim’s advocacy groups voiced strong opposition to the bill, including my organization, Know Your IX, and the Victim’s Rights Law Center, the American Association of University Women, the National Women’s Law Center, and a number of student activist groups. John Faubert, of the One in Four campaign, called the bill “colossally stupid legislation.” At the time of writing, more than 9,000 people had signed a petition started by a student survivor, calling on legislators to reject the proposal. The bill is also opposed by most higher education advocacy groups, including the American Association of Universities, the large lobbying arm of the association of private universities.

A strong alternative to the Safe Campus Act is the Hold Accountable and Lend Transparency (HALT) Campus Sexual Violence Act, a bipartisan effort introduced by Representatives Jackie Speier (D-CA) and Patrick Meehan (R-PA). HALT would increase federal enforcement of civil rights laws like Title IX and ensure that schools have fair and effective disciplinary systems in place. Unlike the SCA, HALT recognizes that while rape is a crime (and its victims should be able to report to the police if they so choose), it is also a civil rights violation, which schools—not the cops—are best positioned to handle.

The Safe Campus Act would create unconscionable and blatantly sexist barriers to reporting gender violence, making campuses less safe as a result. It’s a slap in the face to survivors who have shared their personal stories and organized tirelessly for better school policies. And, in a year that’s seen national attention to the rampant criminalization and police abuse of people of color—particularly gender violence victims—it’s painfully ignorant of the failures of the criminal justice system. Students need more and better options for reporting gender violence, not fewer. We must hold our legislators to a higher standard and demand real action to end sexual and dating violence on campuses.

A leading anti-choice organization is calling for a national database of abortion statistics and increased reporting requirements for states—proposals seen as part of a strategy to justify laws restricting access to abortion care.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down provisions of Texas’ omnibus anti-choice law known as HB 2. The ruling relied heavily on research that showed abortion care was a safe and well regulated procedure. Anti-choice activists have long disputed those claims.

Clarke Forsythe, acting president of Americans United for Life (AUL), told Politico that there is not enough data on abortion. “The abortion advocates like to talk in vague terms about abortion but we need specifics,” Forsythe said. “We don’t have a national abortion data collection and reporting law.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has collected “abortion surveillance” data since 1969. The CDC published the most recent report on abortion statistics in 2012.

Abortion surveillance reports are created by compiling data from health agencies, provided voluntarily to the CDC, in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and New York City. The data includes deaths from abortion related complications, but does not include the number of complications that don’t result in deaths.

Reporting requirements for abortion statistics vary from state to state, with 46 states requiring that abortion providers submit regular reports, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Most states report the number of abortion procedures performed as well as the type of procedure, the gestation of the pregnancy, and demographic data of the patient.

There are 27 states that require providers to report the number of complications from abortion procedures.

The self-described “legal architect” of the anti-choice movement, AUL has been heavily involved in lobbying for state and federal laws that restrict access to abortion. The organization creates copycat legislation and distributes anti-choice proposals to state lawmakers, who then push the measures through legislatures.

Forsythe took a victory lap Monday for the organization’s role in promoting bills from the AUL’s “playbook of pro-life legislation” that were introduced this year in state legislatures. “AUL continued to assist states considering health and safety standards to protect women in abortion clinics,” Forsythe said in a statement.

Dozens of bills to increase reporting requirements have been introduced in state legislatures over the past several years. These proposals include several types of reporting requirements for abortion providers, and many of the provisions are similar to those found in AUL model legislation.

Arizona legislators in 2010 passed SB 1304, which required abortion providers to submit annual reports to the state and required the state Department of Health Services (DHS) to publish an annual report.

The Republican-backed legislation is similar to copycat legislation drafted that same year by AUL.

Since the law’s passage there have been very few complications resulting from abortion procedures reported in the state: from 2011-2014, less than 1 percent of abortions procedures in the state resulted in complications.

Arizona reported that 137 patients experienced complications out of 12,747 abortion procedures in 2014; 102 patients experienced complications out of 13,254 abortion procedures in 2013; 76 patients had complications out of 13,129 abortion procedures in 2012; 60 patients experienced complications out of 14,401 abortion procedures in 2011.

Dr. Daniel Grossman, a physician at the University of California, San Francisco who studied the impact of HB 2 for the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP), told Politico that abortion has been shown to be exceptionally safe medical procedure.

“There’s already a lot of data that have been published documenting how safe abortion is in the U.S.,” Grossman said.“The abortion complication rate is exceedingly low.”

Anti-choice activists claim that despite the evidence, the number of complications from abortion is higher than is being reported. Joe Pojman, the executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, told Politico that “better data” is needed.

Texas has required reporting of the number of complications from abortion procedures since 2013, and the data has shown that abortion complications are exceedingly rare. There were 447 complications out of 63,849 procedures in 2013 and 777 complications out of 54,902 procedures in 2014.

Pojman said that the Texas data “defies common sense” and that the complications are “are much smaller than what one would expect.”

The Texas abortion statistics reveal that it is safer to have an abortion than to carry a pregnancy to term in the state. Between 2008 and 2013, the most recent years for which data is available, there were 691 maternal deaths in Texas, compared to one death due to abortion complications between 2008 and 2014.

“There’s no sign that there’s a hidden safety problem happening in Texas,” Grossman said.

Bizarre and inflammatory rhetoric is nothing new for this election. In fact, the Republican presidential candidate has made an entire campaign out of it. But during a rally last Tuesday, Donald Trump sunk to a new level. He lamented that if Hillary Clinton is elected president in November, there will be no way to stop her from making judicial nominations.

He said, “By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

For a candidate marred by offensive comment after offensive comment, this language represents a new low, because, as many immediately explained, Trump appears to be making a veiled threat against Clinton, whether he had intended to or not.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called it a “death threat” and Dan Rather, former CBS Evening News host, called it a “direct threat of violence against a political rival.” Former President Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis said it was “horrifying,” and even the author of an NRA-linked blog initially tweeted, “That was a threat of violence. As a real supporter of the #2A it’s appalling to me,” before deleting the tweet as the NRA expressed support for Trump.

This kind of language is violent in nature on its face, but it is also gendered, following in a long line of misogynistic rhetoric this election season. Chants of “kill the bitch” and “hang the bitch” have become common at Trump rallies. These aren’t solely examples of bitter political sniping; these are overt calls for violence.

When women speak out or assert ourselves, we are challenging long-held cultural norms about women’s place and role in society. Offensively gendered language represents an attempt to maintain the status quo. We’ve seen this violent rhetoric online as well. That isn’t an accident. When individuals throw pejorative terms at those of who refuse to be silenced, they are attempting to render public spaces, online or on the campaign trail, unsafe for us.

There is no shortage of examples demonstrating how individuals who feel threatened by subtle power shifts happening in our society have pushed back against those changes. The interactions happening online, on various social media platforms, offer the most vivid examples of the ways in which people are doing their best to try to make public spaces as uncomfortable as possible for marginalized populations.

Social media offers the opportunity for those whose voices are routinely ignored to hold power in a new way. It is a slow but real shift from old, more traditional structures of privileging certain voices to a more egalitarian megaphone, of sorts.

For marginalized populations, particularly women of color and transgender women, social media can provide an opportunity to be seen and heard in ways that didn’t exist before. But it also means coming up against a wall of opposition, often represented in a mundane but omnipresent flow of hatred, abuse, and violent threats from misogynist trolls.

The internet has proven to be a hostile place for women. According to a report from the United Nations, almost three quarters of women online have been exposed to some form of cyber violence. As someone who has received threats of violence myself, I know what it feels like to have sharing your voice met with rage. There are women who experience this kind of violent rhetoric to an even greater degree than I could ever dream.

The list of women who have been inundated with threats of violence could go on for days. Women like Zerlina Maxwell, who was showered with rape threats after saying that we should teach men not to rape; Lindy West received hundreds upon hundreds of violent and threatening messages after she said that she didn’t think rape jokes were funny; Leslie Jones, star of Ghostbusters and Saturday Night Live, was driven off of Twitter after a coordinated attack of racist, sexist, and violent language against her.

And yet, rarely are such threats taken seriously by the broader community, including by those able to do something about it.

Many people remain woefully unaware of how cruel and outright scary it can be for women online, particularly women with prolific digital profiles. Some simply refuse to see it as a real issue, declaring that “It’s just the internet!” and therefore not indicative of potential physical violence. Law enforcement doesn’t even have a solution, often unwilling to take these threats seriously, as Amanda Hess found out.

This kind of response is reflected in those who are trying to defend Donald Trump after the seemingly indefensible. Despite the overwhelming criticism from many, including some renowned Republicans, we have also seen some Trump supporters try to diminish or outright erase the violent aspect of this clearly threatening rhetoric. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani have both said that they assumed Trump meant get rid of her “by voting.” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that it “sounds like just a joke gone bad.”

The violent nature of Donald Trump’s comments seem apparent to almost everyone who heard him. To try to dismiss it as a “joke” or insist that it is those who are offended that are wrong is itself harmful. This is textbook gaslighting, a form of psychological abuse in which a victim’s reality is eroded by telling them that what they experienced isn’t true.

But gaslighting has played a major role in Donald Trump’s campaign, with some of his supporters insisting that it is his critics who are overreacting—that it is a culture of political correctness, rather than his inflammatory and oppressive rhetoric, that is the real problem.

This is exactly what women experience online nearly every day, and we are essentially told to just suck it up, that it’s just the internet, that it’s not real. But tell that to Jessica Valenti, who received a death and rape threat against her 5-year-old daughter. Tell that to Anita Sarkeesian, who had to cancel a speech at Utah State after receiving a death threat against her and the entire school. Tell that to Brianna Wu, a game developer who had to flee her home after death threats. Tell that to Hillary Clinton, who is trying to make history as the first woman president, only to have her life threatened by citizens, campaign advisers, and now through a dog whistle spoken by the Republican presidential candidate himself.

Threats of violence toward women are commonplace on the internet for the same reason that they are increasingly common at Donald Trump’s rallies: They are effective at perpetuating violence against women as the norm.

Language matters. When that language is cruel, aggressive, or outright violent, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it doesn’t come without consequences. There is a reason that it is culturally unacceptable to say certain words like “cunt” and other derogatory terms; they have a history of harm and oppression, and they are often directly tied to acts of violence. When someone tweets a woman “I hope your boyfriend beats you,” it isn’t just a trolling comment; it reflects the fact that in the United States, more women are killed by intimate partners than by any other perpetrator, that three or more women die every day from intimate partner violence. When Donald Trump not only refuses to decry calls of violence and hate speech at his rallies but in fact comes across as threatening his female opponent, it isn’t just an inflammatory gaffe; it reflects the fact that one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence.

Threats of violence have no place in presidential campaigns, but they also have no place online, either. Until we commit ourselves to rooting out violent language against women and to making public spaces safer and more accommodating for women and all marginalized people, Trump’s comments are just par for the course.