Thread by @chasestrangio

We Must Love One Another: Why Trans & Repro Justice Movement Should Be Building Solidarity | A thread by me & @rkidvai, Director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund.

We are seeing an escalation of state-level attacks on trans people and reproductive justice. Trans and repro justice are either seen as separate or in conflict but they are interdependent. We must uplift and invest in each other as we collectively fight this state violence.

The repro and trans justice movements have the shared goals of ensuring individuals and families have resources and a healthy environment to make decisions about our bodies. This means creating the families we want and raising the children we have free from state violence

Anti-trans health bans are often predicated on the lie that such care is always sterilizing. And like with all regulation of reproductive autonomy notions of sterility and preservation of fertility are then used in the service of enhanced state control over bodies/reproduction.

Our communities are already surviving so much state & interpersonal violence. The declaration of war against bodily autonomy (and the current Supreme Court’s rubber stamping of it) will come at particular cost to people accessing lifesaving reproductive & gender-affirming care.

The anti-trans & repro bills being introduced around the country perpetuate stigma and suspicion of trans + pregnant people, pushing for the surveillance and criminalization of their bodies under the guise of paternalistically claiming to protect them from themselves.

The shutting down of clinics, drug-testing, deputizing community members and medical providers to surveil and report trans & pregnant people through the family regulation, criminal punishment & civil systems puts an immense burden on the mental health & safety of our communities

The attacks won’t stop with banning gender-affirming care for youth or abortion. This is part of a larger set of systemic imperatives that will also come for birth control, gender-affirming care for people of all ages, ivf, and even marriage equality.

They don’t want to protect us, they want to control and eradicate us. And it is through our collective action that we resist and rebuild the world we want and need to live in.