By Imara Jones, TransLash Media
One of the most underreported issues from mainstream media in the 2022 mid-term election is the centrality of bodily autonomy. In the news, abortion bans and transgender bans are covered as two separate, distinct issues. For conservatives in America, these two issues have long been linked together as a central unifying idea to gain votes. And it’s working.
When PA Republican state representative Stephanie Borowicz introduced legislation to ban lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in all Pennsylvania public schools, she not only mimicked Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law, she drew from a long-term, right-wing playbook to gain control over our bodies.
Does that sound extreme? Not to queer and trans people. Think back to the summer of 1969, New York City. Police officers entered The Stonewall Inn and roughed up queer and trans people. Dozens, especially Black and Brown individuals, were beaten and arrested simply because of what they chose to do with their bodies.
Images of that violence accelerated demands for society to decriminalize the choices people were making about gender expression or whom they loved. At the same time, the reproductive rights movement fought for freedom over our bodies in court case after court case, culminating in the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade in 1973.
For the first time, in all fifty states, the principle was established that people have the right to choose what they do with their own body. The LGBTQ and reproductive rights movements are both fundamentally rooted in the same fight — we all deserve bodily autonomy.
In the years that followed, medical advancements were made to provide gender-affirming care for trans and non-binary people. Contraception and surgical and medical abortion became more accessible. Roe v. Wade unlocked greater legal freedom over our bodies, such as the ban of marital rape in 1993. The fight for reproductive and trans rights were always on parallel tracks even if leaders in those movements or others didn’t see or highlight how interconnected the issues are to one another.
The Christian Nationalist movement, however, understood that fundamental linkage and mounted a coordinated assault on both reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights. In the last 30 years, they’ve poured billions of dollars into rolling back hard-won progress. They saw greater choice of what one does with one’s own body as an ultimate threat to their vision of control. That’s because our bodies are the first site of freedom. A free society is impossible without freedom over our bodies.
Sadly, their long-term strategic investment in attacking bodily autonomy has found success in courts and state legislatures. Their most recent and significant victory, the overturn of Roe v. Wade, set us back fifty years. And they are now exploiting this linkage for even more political gain in the mid-term elections.
Make no mistake. These attacks are not random or scattershot. They are methodical, intentional, and the result of a well-oiled extremist effort to exploit the lives, and bodies, of youth, women, and trans people in the creation of a potent political wedge to win votes. And it’s working.
Pennsylvanians need to understand the threat. Borowicz’s bill to ban lessons on sexuality education in schools is replicated in state after state as one part of this coordinated effort. In Massachusetts, far-right activists unleashed a torrent of threatening calls and emails against Boston Children’s Hospital over its health care services for transgender youth. Identical attacks were launched just last month against UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
In Texas, Governor Abbot is calling on social workers to report parents of trans kids who make therapy appointments for gender affirming care as child abusers. Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor Doug Mastriano has accused the state’s Department of Education of encouraging “Gender Theory Indoctrination,” a term used by right-wing lawmakers across the country to attack schools.
People in many states are now worried about whether they can go to a doctor to get care for a miscarriage. In Florida, female teen aged student-athletes are asked to report their menstrual history to play sports. In Idaho, the state House passed a bill that would have criminalized gender-affirming care for trans children. The state Senate barely blocked it.
That’s why the mid-term elections are so critical.
Once you link these issues together, you understand what’s really on the ballot: Who gets to control our bodies? Do we, consulting with our doctors, teachers, families and trusted professionals, make the decisions on what’s best for our own body? Or do politicians? In state after state where key seats are up for grabs, it’s actually our bodies that are up for grabs. We cannot let this happen in Pennsylvania, or anywhere.
Imara Jones, Emmy and Peabody Awardee, is the creator of TransLash Media, a cross-platform non-profit journalism and narrative organization that produces content to shift the culture of hostility towards transgender people in the US. Imara hosts the WEBBY-nominated TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones as well as the investigative series The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality.