42 States Have Considered or Passed Anti-Abortion or Anti-Trans Laws This Year

Is your state anti-abortion? It’s probably anti-trans, too.

By Neda Toloui-Semnani
May 24, 2022

“I'm devastated and frustrated and losing sleep. I’m worried out of my mind about it,” said Myriam Reynolds, a Texas resident and mother of a 17-year-old transgender child.

Reynolds and her children live about 30 minutes north of Dallas. A few months ago, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, issued an executive order that directed the state’s child welfare agency to investigate parents and guardians who’ve helped secure gender-affirming care for their trans children. Since then, Reynolds told VICE News, it’s been “absolutely horrible.” The state’s Supreme Court upheld the order in May, allowing the agency to open new investigations of child abuse into these families.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vamy/states-with-anti-abortion-trans-laws

How abortion bans harm LGBTQ2 people, too

Queer and trans people are systematically harmed by continued attempts to dismantle abortion access in the U.S.

By Jessica Zucker
Aug 25, 2020

Amidst a global pandemic that has already claimed the lives of over 165,000 Americans and left more than 20 million unemployed, GOP politicians are still shamelessly focused on curtailing access to safe, legal, affordable abortion care. In Nebraska, Republicans have introduced a bill that would ban an abortion method that is proven to be safe. In Iowa, GOP lawmakers passed a law requiring abortion patients to make an additional, medically unnecessary appointment with an abortion provider then wait 24 hours to receive abortion care. In Tennessee, lawmakers successfully banned abortion as early as six weeks, which is before most people even know they’re pregnant (the law was blocked by a federal court 45 minutes after it was signed).

Continued: https://www.dailyxtra.com/abortion-bans-harm-lgbtq2-178036

Why We Need Literature on Abortion

Why We Need Literature on Abortion
In this excerpt from Choice Words, Annie Finch's anthology of abortion poems, stories, and essays, she reflects on how literature on abortion is necessary on both a personal level and a larger societal one.

May 1, 2020
Annie Finch

I had an abortion in 1999.

Searching for literature to help me absorb my experience, I realized that I had rarely read anything about abortion (and I have a Ph.D. in literature). I was astounded to discover that there was no major literary anthology about one of the most profound experiences in my life and that of millions of others. A physical, psychological, moral, spiritual, political, and cultural reality that navigates questions of life and death, abortion should be one of the great themes of literature.

My anthology, Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, which was published recently, was the result of the 20-year search that grew out of this initial sense of shock and loss.

continued: https://rewire.news/article/2020/05/01/why-we-need-literature-on-abortion/

For Trans Men Seeking Reproductive Health Care, ‘There Are Barriers Every Step of the Way’

For Trans Men Seeking Reproductive Health Care, ‘There Are Barriers Every Step of the Way’
“It’s ironic to me, in a really sad way, because so much of transphobia and transmisogyny is focused on the genitalia of a person, and in this instance our reproductive organs suddenly don't matter."

Jul 3, 2019
Tris Mamone

Despite working in the medical field for 15 years—six as an emergency medical technician and nine as a paramedic—Don Altemus rarely gets routine reproductive health-care examinations because they are often awkward for him as a trans man.

“I happen to have a very masculine presentation,” he told Rewire.News, “And long before my transition, people ‘read’ me as male.”

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2019/07/03/trans-men-reproductive-health-care/

Women Aren’t The Only People Who Get Abortions

Women Aren't The Only People Who Get Abortions
Transgender men and other gender-nonconforming folks get abortions, too. But no one's discussing how the recent abortion bans will affect them.

By Alanna Vagianos, HuffPost US
06/06/19

Jack Qu’emi Gutiérrez was a 20-year-old college student in a self-described “shitty relationship” when they found out they were pregnant.

It was 2011 and Gutiérrez, a nonbinary person who uses the pronouns they/them, had to pool all their money at the time to pay the $500 to get the abortion pill. Even though Gutiérrez chose to have a medication abortion (“I didn’t want a bunch of people in my crotch”), they were still forced to undergo two trans-vaginal ultrasounds before obtaining the abortion pill.

“I felt very, very much alone,” Gutiérrez told HuffPost. “I didn’t have any frame of reference for what an abortion would be like, period. Not to mention what an abortion would be like as a nonbinary person.”

Continued: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/women-arent-the-only-people-who-get-abortions_n_5cf55540e4b0e346ce8286d3

The Trump Administration Will Allow Health Workers To Refuse Abortion And Sex Reassignment Services

The Trump Administration Will Allow Health Workers To Refuse Abortion And Sex Reassignment Services
The rule will protect discrimination based on “conscience” or “religious beliefs,” but opponents argue it will greatly limit access to care.

Ema O'Connor BuzzFeed News Reporter
Dominic Holden BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on May 2, 2019

The Trump administration released a final rule Thursday that will allow health workers to refuse to perform or assist medical procedures — like abortion, assisted suicide, or sex reassignment surgery — if it violates their “conscience” or religion.

The rule, which will take effect in 60 days, applies to health care institutions receiving federal funding. It repeals an Obama-era discrimination protection rule that President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services said “proved inadequate.” The new rule specifically protects “providers, individuals, and other health care entities from having to provide, participate in, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for, services such as abortion, sterilization, or assisted suicide.”

Continued: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emaoconnor/trump-rule-religious-doctors-refuse-abortion-sex

02.05.2019