By Nick Fulton, Prism
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned a nearly 50-year precedent of federal reproductive access. Three years later, the movement for reproductive freedom has expanded, with the inclusion of trans liberation, to become more intersectional than ever before.
Since the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the work to provide abortion care has not stopped. It has only taken new roots. According to advocates and direct service providers, the fight for reproductive justice now stands shoulder to shoulder with trans liberation under the umbrella of bodily autonomy.
“There is no way that you can disassociate LGBTQ liberation from the fight for reproductive justice. You just can’t have one without the other,” said Regina Davis Moss, president of In Our Own Voice, a national partnership that works to secure sexual and reproductive justice for Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people. “Reproductive justice has always been about cross-movement collaboration.”
Davis Moss noted that this “cross-movement collaboration” has only become more visible since the fall of Roe.
This movement’s visibility has filled streets with demonstrations. In September 2024, more than 2,000 people attended the Gender Liberation March in Washington, D.C., coming together for medical access to abortion and gender-affirming care.
The shared dissent goes even deeper than a shared point of protest. The future of the fight for bodily autonomy has become more fluid at every level, including in direct services.
“Trans people not only need access to gender-affirming care, but we also need access to reproductive care. That is how we shape our own futures,” said Oliver Hall, trans health director at the Kentucky Health Justice Network (KHJN).
Hall launched the first trans health program at an abortion fund back in 2016, and over the past three years, their work at the intersection of trans liberation and reproductive care has only intensified.
In Kentucky, KHJN provides financial assistance, transportation, interpretation, and more direct services for people seeking an abortion. It also offers financial assistance, personal advocacy, and resources for people seeking gender-affirming care. This work that reaches people where they are and provides them with an immediate answer is the most important aspect of post-Dobbs organizing, according to Hall, especially in a state as red as Kentucky.
“People don’t need care in 10 years when we have abortion access restored nationally. They need care now. Once we get people that care, that’s what allows people to also organize,” Hall said. “When we meet people’s immediate material needs, when someone doesn’t have to focus on staying alive, they can focus on building a better future.”
Just as this fight for bodily autonomy has become a shared effort, so has the opposition’s ambition to restrict care.
“There are undeniable similarities between the ways that people opposed to abortion access and people trying to restrict gender-affirming care have operated, using pretty much the exact same playbook,” Hall said.
That “playbook” is one that has become a staple of far-right attacks on both reproductive freedom and the trans community as a whole during and since the 2024 election cycle. Conservative lawmakers have launched an aggressive agenda targeting bodily autonomy on all levels.
On reproductive care, the Republican Party has wasted no time. The Senate is currently attempting to defund Planned Parenthood nationally. The White House has stopped enforcing legislation meant to protect reproductive health care patients and providers from violence, which has resulted in a culture of harassment for service providers.
Similarly, the Trump administration has centered attacks on trans people as a priority of its first six months. The president has signed executive orders restricting gender-affirming care, making it impossible for trans people to be given accurate passports, and banning trans people from serving in the military, among countless other anti-trans orders. On June 18, the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump appointees, upheld a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors.
The way by which Trump and conservatives are seeking to disempower communities on both of these issues is concerningly similar, advocates say. Conservatives seek to limit access to resources, siphon off protections, and create an atmosphere where violence can be normalized, according to advocates.
This barrage of attacks on bodily autonomy is another piece of connective tissue. The solution that advocates are pointing to, alongside direct services, is legislation that advances bodily autonomy while being fully considerate of everyone potentially affected. This fight for equitable legislation now lives with the states.
“We have seen a number of states that have taken up reproductive rights as a ballot initiative. And here in Ohio, I was really proud of the fact that we did intentionally craft the language of that constitutional amendment to be inclusive of trans people. It does not use gendered language,” said Lis Regula, an advocacy associate with Men Having Babies and a Free & Just storyteller.
This win in Ohio is an example of a new age of legislation advancing bodily autonomy. Since Dobbs, there have been ballot measures across the country that have aimed to enshrine access to care. This is where the fight for care remains, in expanding access state by state and delivering care as consistently as possible.
Over the past three years, the objective has remained the same for organizers and advocates: advance access to services, mitigate harm, and protect an individual’s right to choose care. What has shifted is how groups work together with a shared understanding of the intersections between trans liberation and reproductive freedom in a political climate opposed to a person’s ability to make decisions about their own body.
“There is more of a desire for the various movements to want to work together, not only because we’re having a shared experience of feeling attacked, but because we also know how much more powerful we are when we work collectively,” Davis Moss said.
This editorial was originally published in Prism.
