Trans-Inclusive Language for Reproductive Justice

Abortion is a Human Right and Trans Rights are Human Rights

Trans Awareness Week is November 13–19. In Louisiana, where pregnancy-related mortality rates are the highest in the U.S. and where bodily autonomy has been threatened with the recent ban on abortion with zero exceptions for rape or incest, people in the trans community are experiencing a life-threatening double burden.

STAR, a Louisiana-based non-profit, serves survivors of all genders, sexualities, and intersections. Survivors of rape often need access to abortion; according to the CDC, about 3 million sexual violence survivors in the U.S. experience rape-related pregnancy in their lifetime. Trans people are disproportionately likely to experience sexual violence. While 1 in 5 cisgender women report sexual violence, 1 in 2 trans people experience sexual violence. Based on these figures, it is obvious that rape-related pregnancy severely impacts trans communities.

The power of inclusive language

Using trans-inclusive language when talking about abortion and reproductive justice is important because 1) trans people often face systemic marginalization that excludes them from these conversations, which can result in the exclusion of trans people from live-saving services; 2) using trans-inclusive language emphasizes bodily autonomy for all persons; 3) trans-inclusive language is a powerful form of resistance to cisheteropatriarchal systems of power-based oppression.

Trans people often face disparate barriers to accessing medical care. These barriers include medical transphobia, microaggressions, and a lack of understanding and inclusion of trans people.

“Numerous factors explain LGBTQIA+ people’s disparate need for abortion, such as the link between poverty and lack of access to contraception and abortion rates; the lack of comprehensive and inclusive sex education in schools, which puts LGBTQIA+ youth at risk of unintended pregnancies” — Lambda Legal

Trans people are also often excluded from studies, research, and policy that impacts access to reproductive care.

Using trans-inclusive language honors bodily autonomy and resists cisheteropatriarchal systems of gender-based oppression. Sexual violence is a form of power-based violence. Therefore, talking about abortion rights with language that makes cisheteropatriarchal power structures apparent is integral to addressing the problem of sexual violence. Using trans-inclusive language in general can be important to making the world a safer place for people of all genders.

Many organizations are utilizing gender-affirming language to talk about abortion. According to Everyday Feminism, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Civil Liberties Union, and CNN are more frequently opting for gender-neutral language like “pregnant people”, “people who get abortion” and “birthing parent” in favor of “women”.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about Dobbs vs. Jackson, the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Berkeley Law Professor Khiara Bridges educated that while many “many cis women have the capacity for pregnancy, many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as nonbinary people who are capable of pregnancy”. She noted that the transphobia in conversations taking place in the Senate was directly connected to violence many trans people face. She explained that, “denying trans people exist, and pretending not to know they exist” was transphobic and “opened up” normalization of violence towards trans people. Bridges’ commitment to using trans-inclusive language shows us how words can reify or challenge systemic and structural violence.

Record high anti-trans legislation paired with record high anti-abortion legislation is no coincidence

In addition to trans rights explicitly coming up in the 2022 Senate hearing, many of the key players in banning abortion have also been integral in proposing anti-trans legislation. Record-high anti-trans legislation accompanied and foreboded record-high anti-abortion legislation. It may not be a mere coincidence that these two types of legislation coincide. The American Civil Liberties Union reports, “Over 300 anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed in state legislatures just in 2022, and over 20 new anti-trans bills have become law over the past three years. In the same period of time, 541 restrictions aimed at pushing abortion out of reach have been proposed and 38 have become law”.

Trans activist, best-selling author, professor at Barnard College, and NYTimes contributor Jennifer Boylan identifies that what the anti-abortion and anti-trans legislation has in common is “the enforcement of a very strict gender binary based on the exploitation of reproductive labor”. Boylan also notes a commonality between the efforts to ban abortion and the efforts to erase transgender people. She writes, “in both cases, we see the protection of a fantasized imperiled child justifying heavy-handed police state policies that restrict actual women and children’s rights and bodily autonomy…the language of protection, so highly moralized”.

Protecting the “Imperiled Child” and White Supremacy

The emphasis on the imagined “imperiled child” used by anti-abortion and anti-trans agendas highlights a rhetorical device frequently used by white supremacy. The American Defamation League (ADL) notes that 14 words are “the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world”. The fourteen words are: “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”.

The slogan was influenced by Nazi Germany and coined by David Lane, member of white supremacist group The Order. According to the ADL, this slogan reflects the worldview “that unless immediate action is taken, the white race is doomed to extinction by an alleged ‘rising tide of color”. This slogan reveals an important connection between abortion rights, trans rights, and anti-racism.

Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project, says that “at the heart of abortion bans is a desire to uphold traditional gender roles”, comparing them to attempts to ban gender-affirming care. The 14 words expound how traditional gender roles determined by reproductive capacity are critical to upholding white supremacy.

The inclusion of trans people does not equal the exclusion of cis women, or anyone else for that matter

Some dissidents of gender-affirming language complain that using trans-inclusive language will exclude cis women and obfuscate the connection between patriarchy and abortion bans. However, using trans-inclusive language doesn’t mean excluding anyone. Paulo Freire reminds us in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed that clarifying and adding nuance can only strengthen critical consciousness.

We’re not skipping talking about sexism, we’re clarifying that sexism requires binarism and cisnormativity to function (cissexism). Cisnormativity can be defined as the idea that only cis people are normal and trans people are aberrant, nonexistent, or unimportant. Aspen Ruhlin, a Client Advocate at the Mabel Wadsworth Center explains that transphobia isn’t limited to overt acts of physical violence and “transphobia also includes more covert acts that frame being trans as wrong or non-existent”.

Just as language has the power to oppress trans people, it can also have the power be used to empower people; this is why the conversation about reproductive justice must include people of all intersections. In other words, we don’t have to stop talking about how abortion rights impact women, we can include women and trans people. Saying “women and trans people” may take a few more words to say. But this conversation is too important to skimp on. It’s ok to say as many words as needed to in order to speak up and create helpful dialogue about reproductive justice.

Embracing inclusive language as a tool of empowerment

One example of using words that uplift abortion rights in an intersectional and inclusive way is given by Sister Song, a women of color reproductive justice collective. Sister Song defines reproductive justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” Sister Song’s vision of reproductive justice not only centers on the experiences of BIPOC folks but also deliberately uses gender-inclusive language, recognizing the importance of including trans people in the conversation. Sister Song’s choice to frame reproductive justice as a “human right” is one example of how to use trans-inclusive language.

Edited by Tanya Rawal-Jindia