Historically, anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ advocates have fostered an increasingly hostile environment for diminishing meaningful access to essential health care. It is crucial to honor and ground this fight in champions who have paved the way and fearlessly advocated for rights to accessing care such as California’s Barbara Lee, who worked tirelessly to repeal the Hyde Amendment for abortion access. In the past few years, however, there has been a dramatic increase in attacks against two widely used, best-practice medically necessary forms of health care: abortion and gender affirming care. These attacks fall hardest on communities who already face systemic challenges when receiving health care and building towards economic security including Black, Indigenous and other people of color, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, disabled people, and young people.
These attacks also come from the same lawmakers and organizations using the same harmful strategies and legislative bills to undermine access. Typically, the playbook of strategic attacks on both abortion and gender affirming care are rooted in undermining people’s bodily autonomy and their ability to make decisions about their own bodies and health care. However, the lesser known and understood connection between the attacks on both are rooted in both “parental rights” and state surveillance and criminalization of accessing each type of health care. This paper will explore the overlapping connection of these two realms when analyzing restrictions on both abortion and gender affirming care and how these strategies have fueled a growing surge of attacks on both forms of health care.
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