Does Ignoring Trans People Make Your Point Look Bigger? →

Tobi Hill-Meyer at Bilerico

This past year access to hormonal birth control has become a major political issue. Many insurance companies exclude birth control from their plans and a large political movement has been fighting to make such discriminatory practices illegal.

Those same insurance companies also discriminatorily exclude access to hormone replacement therapy for trans people, but unfortunately there has been comparatively very little movement to end that discrimination.

As conservatives push towards making hormonal birth control illegal, you can bet such an outcome would impact trans women as well, as the hormone pills we take are made from the same synthesized hormones, just in different doses.

As conservatives seek to defund Planned Parenthood and shut down clinics that offer abortion in the struggle over reproductive rights, it increasingly puts access to basic services at risk. Just as cis women seek services at these clinics unrelated to abortion, so do trans women. In fact, in some areas Planned Parenthood is one of the only service providers willing to prescribe hormones and related care for trans people. (In other areas Planned Parenthood refuses services to us for being trans, but that’s another issue).

So it is true that I will never have personal need for an abortion. However, I have relied on Planned Parenthood and other women’s clinics. I have lobbied my state legislature for insurance coverage of birth control. I have lobbied city governments to adopt insurance plans for their own employees that cover hormones for trans people. I have personally been sterilized because the government demanded it (a requirement my birth state of California rescinded just this last year). And I continue to fight for access to women’s health care - both cis women and trans women.

Inclusion is important. #thatisall

9 months ago  /  57 notes  /