Since the U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturned the landmark 1973 abortion rights case Roe v. Wade on June 24, activists have cried out in fury over a monumental loss of reproductive rights. Yet their messaging and calls to action too often fail to include trans people, a massive disappointment for a community that needs reproductive health care as much as any.
From pushback on gender-inclusive abortion language to accusations of misogyny when trans people ask to be included in conversations on care, the fight reflects how deeply medical transphobia and trans-exclusionary reproductive activism are entrenched in our country. And because battles for reproductive rights and transgender healthcare are often painted as parallel but separate struggles, trans abortion seekers are often left on the margins.
“It feels like a failure to recognize that trans people need access to healthcare outside of transition-related care,” Oliver Hall, Trans Health Director at Kentucky Health Justice Network, tells Them. “Trans people give birth, trans people get abortions, and trans people need access to birth control.”
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has triggered abortion bans in 13 states that have already gone into effect or will do so in the weeks to follow the ruling. Ten other states have pre-Roe abortion bans that will go into effect now that the ruling has fallen. This leaves all abortion seekers — especially those from exploited communities, like trans people and people of color – more vulnerable in nearly half of the country.
It is no coincidence that legislators in many of these trigger-law states are simultaneously moving to ban HRT treatments and surgeries for trans people, further highlighting that the fights for abortion access and trans healthcare are ultimately rooted in the right to bodily autonomy.
“They’re very fundamentally intertwined, and you cannot think about one without thinking about the other,” Dr. Quinn Jackson, a family physician and fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, tells Them. “Anti-abortion legislation and anti-trans legislation are both rooted in this fundamentalist, white supremacist value system that really has no place in medicine.”
Trans people already faced barriers to care. A post-Roe v. Wade landscape will only exacerbate them
Prior to this most recent attack on reproductive rights, trans people already struggled to get access to safe abortions and reproductive healthcare overall due to structural oppression and interpersonal discrimination. “Trans people are more likely to live below the poverty line, more likely to not have access to transportation, and are more likely to face social isolation, so in the case of an outright ban, practical barriers like traveling to another state are even harder,” Hall tells Them.
“That’s really compounded by the discrimination trans people face in healthcare,” Jackson says. Trans people seeking care have long reported facing transphobia at healthcare facilities, ranging from deadnaming and misgendering to physical assault and overall refusal of care. 28% of respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey reported postponing care because they were scared of mistreatment. “It’s really scary for trans folks to try to access healthcare because we just never know if we’re going to be treated terribly,” Jackson tells Them. This lack of accessible trans-competent care has dire consequences.
According to a 2021 study published in the BMJ of Sexual and Reproductive Health, 36% of trans people who have been pregnant have attempted to end their pregnancies “without clinical supervision.” Almost one in five went through with the attempt, using both safe and unsafe methods, such as substance abuse and physical trauma. Many of those surveyed said they opted to avoid official clinics because of the transphobia they faced from medical practitioners.
With the overturning of Roe, experts are concerned about what this means for all abortion seekers, especially those with compounding identities. “It’s just gonna make all of these problems so much worse,” Jackson says. Yet the national conversation on abortion access often fails to account for the nuanced barriers faced by trans abortion seekers, and ultimately lets down those who need such advocacy most.
Trans people are on the frontlines of the fight for abortion access, but they're often erased entirely
While many trans people are intimately involved with reproductive rights organizing, the experiences of trans and nonbinary people are rarely taken into account in national conversations. What’s worse is that some of the erasure comes from within the reproductive rights movement itself. From framing abortion access as a women’s issue to refusing to use inclusive language, trans people face both exclusion and outright hostility for asserting our stake in the conversation.
“Being a trans person who’s had an abortion, seeing people on that internet pushing back so hard on using inclusive language to talk about abortion is just really hard honestly,” Hall tells Them. “Seeing that it’s so important to some people that your experiences are explicitly excluded in this conversation is so disheartening.”
This erasure is partly why Cazembe Murphy Jackson, an organizer and storyteller for the abortion awareness organization We Testify, tells his story. Nearly 20 years ago, Murphy Jackson took out a $300 payday loan and drove over two hours to a Planned Parenthood in Austin, Texas for an abortion. He says the experience saved his life.
“The more representation we have in the reproductive justice movement, the easier it is for people to come out and say ‘I’ve had an abortion too,’” Murphy Jackson tells Them. “The biggest thing about storytelling is it inspires other people to tell their version of the story, which is what we need in order to build power. We need people to be able to relate to each other.”
There are no reproductive rights without trans inclusivity
The fight for reproductive healthcare in the U.S. has historically been co-opted as a white cisgender women’s issue. Murphy Jackson says the continued siloing of issues such as racial justice, reproductive healthcare, and trans rights is an intentional political strategy used to prevent our collective liberation.
“In order to dismantle those kinds of systems that keep us separate and working in silos, we have to work together,” Murphy Jackson tells Them.
If the Supreme Court decision has indicated anything, it’s how interconnected all of our rights truly are. After the court’s decision to overturn Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas implied other landmark civil rights cases could be next, such as Lawrence v. Texas, the case that made the criminalization of gay sex unconstitutional, Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that legalized same-sex marriage, and Loving v. Virginia, the case that made interracial marriage constitutional.
“This is not a woman’s rights issue, it’s not a trans rights issue, it’s not an economic or a racial justice issue, it’s all of that,” Murphy Jackson says. “We all live in the same house under white supremacy, under patriarchy, under racism, we all live in that house and it’s on fire … It’s not just one fight, it’s something everybody should be paying attention to and everybody should be grabbing buckets of water to put out.”
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