The Forced -Teaming of Abortion Healthcare and “Gender-Affirming Healthcare”
On June 24th, 2022 the US Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v Wade, the longstanding 1973 court decision that protected women’s right to privacy, and therefore abortion, under the Constitution. In the wake of this decision, many pro-choice women and men have rallied around Democrat party leaders and pro-choice organizations such as Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and the Women’s March, in an effort to keep abortion legal at the state and federal level. Unbeknownst to most pro-choice voters, however, is the fact that Democrats and the above-named pro-choice organizations have started using the rallying cry of abortion rights to push through guidance and legislation to protect “gender-affirming care.”
I started to notice a trend toward pro-choice organizations pushing gender ideology when, on the day the Supreme Court decision was released, I went onto the Bans Off Our Bodies website, run by Planned Parenthood, to look for protests and marches in my area. While on the website I found a link to their “Protest Tips.” Included in the tips was advice on how to use inclusive language. Examples include “Don’t just say ‘women’ say ‘people,’” “Don’t just say ‘girls’ say ‘children,’” and “‘Pregnant person’ is preferable to ‘mother.’” They also included a list of language and symbols to avoid using, including coat hangers, heavy pro-choice messages, and Handmaid’s Tale references. Women’s rights in the United States had just been taken away and the most recognizable abortion provider in the country was telling women not to say the words woman and pro-choice.
About two weeks later, I attended a pro-choice march in my home state during the first week of July 2022. At the end of the march, the organizers invited some speakers to address the assembled crowd. One of them, a Democrat State Rep, said that we should protect reproductive healthcare, not just for women, but especially for those seeking “gender-affirming healthcare.” This started to make me suspicious. Abortion rights were under attack in the US, so why was this state rep presenting the issue of women’s bodily autonomy as a mere footnote? Why was “gender-affirming healthcare” as important, or as the State Rep implied, maybe even more important than women’s abortion rights? Most of the “threats” that I was aware of around “gender-affirming healthcare” in other states were from laws protecting children from becoming medically transitioned. I had yet to hear of any states in the country outright banning medicalization or surgery for transitioning adults like they were doing with women’s abortion healthcare.
The following Wednesday, on July 13, I attended a webinar hosted by the Women’s March called “Defend Abortion Rights Online - Digital Defenders Training.” The training was less than helpful. A good third of the presentation time was filled with the same garbage I found on the Planned Parenthood website about which terms you shouldn’t use when talking about abortion. The webinar also started off by stating:
“Women’s March is a feminist space. It’s not only open to women. It is open to everyone who is in solidarity with all kinds of women. Transwomen are women. We are not a TERF friendly space” (actual quote).
The big takeaway of the night, we were told, was the message, “Freedom to decide.” This was the phrase that we were told to use when talking about women's abortion rights online. The phrase was taken from a NARAL study “Getting the Edge: Proactive Abortion Messaging to Seize the Debate.” When I looked at the study, the chart they provided in the PDF didn’t include this phrase "Freedom to decide" verbatim. The highest ranked phrase was “A Women’s Freedom to Decide” (pg 31). NARAL decided to “combine” that with some of the other phrases to get “Freedom to decide,” even though that exact language wasn’t part of their study. It seems handy that this language could be used just as easily for “gender-affirming healthcare.”
If you don’t believe that NARAL would ignore survey results to get the answers they were looking for, just take a look at page four. On page four there is a chart called “Preferred term to describe ethnicity” with the majority of respondents saying they preferred the terms Hispanic (61%) or Latino (29%) to Latinx (4%), when talking about their own ethnicity. Can you guess which term they used for the rest of the study? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the made-up gender-neutral one that no one likes.
This lead me down the NARAL rabbit hole, where I found their Reproductive Freedom Conversation Guide. This guide was created by All Above All Action Fund, Emily’s List, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Voto Latino Action Fund. At the beginning of this guide, they answered a question I had yet to find a substantial answer to, “What is wrong with coat hanger imagery on protest signs?”
(Page 7) A note on abortion and safety. Images of back alley abortions and coat hangers and all the dangerous ways people sought abortion before Roe v. Wade are visceral and for many people, all too real. But relying on these images can create the notion that abortion is an unsafe procedure, which is not true. Abortion is already an incredibly safe procedure and medication abortion is available—something that wasn’t available prior to 1973. Just because something is illegal does not mean it is unsafe. What is risky is the criminalization of people who have abortions. Instead, we encourage you to emphasize that: “Abortion is safe.” // “Let’s work to ensure abortion becomes more accessible and less stigmatized.” // “We have the resources and medications, like abortion pills, for people to self-manage their abortions safely.”
What this paragraph fails to mention is that making abortion illegal in certain states will also make resources like safe abortion and abortion pills difficult or impossible to acquire. Perhaps even forcing women to, I don’t know, use coat hangers. So far this guide was not off to a great start.
I then found a connection to “gender-affirming care” on page 33 of the guide: (emphasis mine).
Q: Should people with religious beliefs be allowed to deny care they disagree with, like abortion or gender-affirming care?
A: Everybody should have access to the health care they need, including abortion care and gender-affirming care. Nobody should be denied care or discriminated against because of another person’s ideological beliefs.
What does “gender-affirming care” have to do with a conversation guide for abortion rights? It shouldn’t be in there are all. As I stated previously, Planned Parenthood, one of the creators of this conversation guide, is the most well-known abortion provider in the US. Unlike before Roe, they are now also a gender clinic. I’ve noticed that other abortion providers have followed their lead and added “gender-affirming care” to their menu of services. There’s money to be made there. Money feeds politics and now Democrats will start using abortion rights and “reproductive healthcare/freedom” as a cover to allow children to medically transition, especially in blue states. I know this to be true because they’ve already started.
In the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the Massachusetts State House pushed through Bill H.5090. The bill is “An Act expanding protections for reproductive and gender-affirming care.” That’s right, Massachusetts state representatives used the panic surrounding the loss of federal abortion rights to push through legislation protecting “gender-affirming care.”
From the Boston Herald article about the bill, Rep. Kate Hogan said “Gender affirming care which includes medical surgical mental health and non-medical services is necessary care for our transgender and nonbinary residents. These health care services are crucial to the health and well-being of the community, particularly adolescents, so particularly our kids,” she said.
“Gender-affirming healthcare” for children is experimental and dangerous. Children who are affirmed by medical professionals will be rushed into a lifelong medical pipeline and be given dangerous and experimental drugs like puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones. They will be given the option to undergo surgeries that include a high risk of having life-long medical complications. There is a high chance that these children will become sterile either through the use of blockers and hormones or through “gender-reassignment surgery” which could include castration.
I want to remind you that Planned Parenthood had advice on their protest page to avoid using the term “pro-choice.” Their reasoning being that “Black, Latino, Indigenous, and other people of color have been shut out of the health care system due to this country's legacy of racism and discrimination.” This reasoning leaves out the fact that some Black, Indigenous, and other minority women have historically been sterilized in this country, taking away their choice. These women, much like the children Planned Parenthood and other gender clinics are sterilizing in the name of “gender-affirming care,” had their reproductive choices stolen from them.
In defiance of this advice, I will scream “pro-choice” until my lungs give out. I want choice for women to have a say over their bodies, whatever their reproductive choices, as much as I don’t want children’s reproductive futures to be taken from them before they even reach puberty. I am a staunch abortion-rights advocate, but I cannot align myself with Democrats and so-called “pro-choice” organizations that use women’s pain and desperation for their own bodily rights, to harm children.
I am not writing this to tell you to stop fighting or to vote Republican. I am asking that you stay vigilant. This is going to be a different fight than it was before 1973. Not only because of the draconian policies being implemented by Republicans, but because Democrats and pro-choice organizations, though they may try to hide it, are more concerned with protecting the cash cow that is trans medicine than with protecting women’s rights.
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