Listening to Michele B Goodwin and Ali Velshi discussing women’s reproductive rights a few days ago .
I can’t stop thinking about this in a broader context.
In relation to transgender people, could this actually be why they receive all of the short ends of the stick, these last years?
Whether it’s bathroom bills, sports bans, receiving gender-affirming health care, and their health care professionals being prosecuted.
LGBTQIA+ people in general, and transgender & non-binary folx in particular, are quite likely – from the government’s (but religion can’t be fully disconnected from that in this context) perspective – changing the rules of the game in government reaching all the way up into people’s uteruses (and testes).
It seems that with transgender people too, the long game is towards a total reproductive health and birth control * obsession.
* I use birth control here, not in the colloquial sense of contraceptive pills being referred to as birth control, but in the Republic of Gilead sense, where a woman’s insemination, pregnancy, and birth is completely and absolutely controlled, and with that, the intended preservation & prolonged success of a nation/country/state.
Rising infertility through chemical and hormonal disturbances is troubling enough, why allow people to choose (I really prefer not to use the verb “choosing” when it comes to transgender folx, because then, the narrative too easily gets swayed into “being trans is a choice”, which it is absolutely not) to become infertile?
A transgender woman who may (but how is a woman legally allowed to produce sperm instead of ovum?) or may not (chosen infertility) keep their testes will alter the amount of people being able to impregnate another human.
But here’s the zinger, when it comes to actual pregnancy and how to legislate, police, enforce, and totally control that.
A transgender man or masc-presenting person who kept their uterus may be or become pregnant, may possibly choose to or need to end the pregnancy, and may give birth, but the rules government makes don’t talk about people with an uterus, but about women.
And God forbid (pun intended here), they (need to) start policing men’s bodies…
