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Abortion and Trans Rights are the Same Fight
The likely end of Roe v. Wade comes just as the organized anti-trans movement is revving up. It’s not a coincidence.
Every day, I wake up and curse myself for choosing a career that revolves around reading depressing headlines. This week, in particular, I was full up on despair before Wednesday morning. On Monday, the news broke that the Supreme Court will hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a challenge to Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban; given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, the case will likely be the end of Roe v. Wade. On Tuesday, Tennessee passed a law mandating that businesses must either ban their trans customers from using the correct restrooms or hang up a sign warning cis customers about their policies.
The connection between these two stories — besides both of them making me, specifically, very sad— isn’t immediately obvious. Abortion has been on a long, slow slide into illegality for at least a decade, and state-level restrictions have already made it inaccessible in many places; this fact generates little discussion outside of reproductive rights circles, and many younger activists, reportedly, don’t much care. The legislative attack on trans rights feels more recent, even though trans people have been violently oppressed for ages; it gets…
