Trump’s Anti-Trans EOs Are Just the Beginning

In the brief time that Trump has been back in the White House, he’s unleashed an aggressive assault on democratic norms, federal funding of programs across the nation, and anything remotely resembling basic decency toward people who aren’t straight cis white men. He’s signed so many executive orders that it’s hard to keep track of them all—and easy to feel like we need to spread ourselves thin as we try to figure out whether to prioritize protecting immigrants, safeguarding trans healthcare, and even simply ensuring that scientists have the basic funding needed to do research. Yet as overwhelming as it all feels, it’s important to pay attention. Especially since many of Trump’s actions are making it clear that there’s a thread that connects these seemingly disconnected assaults, one that makes them easier to fight if we only remember that there’s more that binds us together than separates us.

Take, for instance, the blatantly transphobic executive order titled Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation. At first blush, the order is purely an assault on transgender people and gender affirming care: Grotesque language reframes life-saving trans healthcare as “maiming” and “mutilation,” with florid prose repacking transphobic assaults as the protection of children. But keep reading through the text, and you’ll find language that wouldn’t seem out of place in a wholly different context. Section 2c provides readers with a definition of “chemical and surgical mutilation,” which, in addition to puberty blockers and HRT, is said to include:

… procedures that attempt to transform an individual’s physical appearance to align with an identity that differs from his or her sex or that attempt to alter or remove an individual’s sexual organs to minimize or destroy their natural biological functions. (Emphasis mine.)

You don’t have to read too deeply into that line to notice that a procedure which alters or removes an individual’s sexual organs to minimize or destroy their “natural biological functions” sure sounds a lot like many types of commonplace reproductive healthcare. Certainly, an IUD insertion could be seen as altering an individual’s sexual organs to minimize their natural biological functions; so, too, could less invasive forms of contraception like the Pill, let alone something as targeted as abortion. And what of elective ovariectomies or hysterectomies that are used to alleviate the pain of endometriosis? These, too, could theoretically fall under that banner—to say nothing of life-saving surgeries for ovarian, testicular, and other reproductive organ cancers.

It may seem like a stretch to draw a line from a ban on orchiectomies used to help trans women feel fully at home in their bodies and those that are used to remove cancerous testicles from a fatally ill person’s body. And yet time and again, we’ve seen that once we cede ground on one issue of bodily autonomy, it is only a matter of time before the Right attempts to gain control of more territory. Democrats spent years throwing abortion under the bus in an attempt to protect birth control—anyone remember the hearings where we were all assured that Plan B is not an abortifacient, as though abortifacients were inherently bad? And yet the second Roe v. Wade was overturned, Republicans began making moves to bar not just abortion, but other forms of contraception as well. In many states, the life-saving applications of abortion medications aren’t seen as distinct from their use as abortifacients. The fact that “abortion care” is nothing more than a collection of medications and procedures that have a wide range of applications, including abortion, is utterly irrelevant to anti-abortion zealots. It doesn’t matter if the pills and procedures used can, among other things, save the lives of people who’ve had incomplete miscarriages, treat fibroids, provide relief for people with Cushing’s, decrease the risk of ulcers, and, yes, even treat cancer. So long as they are tainted by an association with abortion, they’re seen as fair game for right-wing forces.

On a very fundamental level, all of these fights are connected. We don’t have to figure out separate strategies for advocating for trans rights, reproductive rights, queer rights, sex worker rights, and all the rest. At the most basic level, all of these fights are united by one simple ideal: People have the right to bodily autonomy, and they have the right to make their own decisions about their medical care, their sex lives, and their romantic relationships, particularly when these decisions don’t affect anyone outside the bubble of those who have consented to partake in them.

In pushing back against the government’s attack on trans youth, we can also push back on its attacks on contraception, abortion, and many more of our newly vulnerable rights simply by remembering that the government does not have the right to tell us what to do with our own bodies. If we want to alter our hormones or use surgery to reshape our genitals or terminate a pregnancy or engage in queer sex or, in the words of the immortal Cher, put tits on our backs, it’s nobody’s business but our own. More than that, we can push back against assaults on anyone whose body is unfairly policed by the government, whether that’s disabled people, people of color, immigrants, incarcerated people, or any other group whose freedom to move freely, determine their reproductive fates, and make decisions about their health and wellbeing are routinely compromised by our racist, ableist, LGBTQ-phobic society.

Once we remember that—once we truly fight for that—everything becomes a whole lot easier. We don’t need to devise bespoke explanations for why trans kids should have the freedom to be kids who play sports with their friends, or why pregnant people deserve the right to end an unwanted pregnancy. We only need to remember that we have the inalienable right to decide what is right for our own bodies—and that in protecting that right, we protect not just the trans kids and the abortion seekers and other people who exist on the fringes of society, but every single one of us. Particularly in the most vulnerable moments where we need access to procedures and medications that may also benefit trans kids.