Women, Pregnant People, and Fragility
Apparently, humanity is debatable.
[For those who want to listen to this on-the-go, the audio version should be up on Apple’s podcast website soon. You can also listen here.]
If you were on Twitter a few weeks ago, there’s a good chance you saw the shit storm that erupted over the American Civil Liberties Union tweeting out a tribute to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the first anniversary of her death.
It included a heavily edited quote—one of her most famous—from her Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 1993. Rather than downplay her support for abortion rights, then-Judge Ginsburg made an impassioned case for the right of women to make health care decisions over their own bodies.
The ACLU’s edited quote replaced all uses of “women” and feminine gendered references with gender-neutral words to reflect the fact that trans men and non-binary people also need abortion care access.
I want to be clear that the ACLU, despite its good intentions, was completely wrong to edit the quote, for a few reasons:
1. At that time, then-Judge Ginsburg was most likely under the impression that only cis women needed abortions, or maybe, that the frequency of trans men and non-binary needing abortions was so rare that it might be like introducing calculus concepts to someone struggling to grasp long division. Or, perhaps, she was completely unaware of trans and non-binary experiences in abortion care. The point being: her intent here was to focus on cis women. This wasn’t a careless goof in which she forgot to use inclusive language. This is how virtually everyone talked about abortion care and would for quite some time. Thus, editing the quote is misrepresenting her intent.
2. Even if then-Judge Ginsburg had been well aware of trans men and non-binary people needing abortions at that time, she’s not alive to tell us that. To the best of my knowledge, there’s no further clarification the late Justice has offered on the quote and because she’s now passed on, the only person with the ability to properly contextualize it is no longer with us.
I have no idea how the late Justice Ginsburg would feel about this fiasco, and it’s not for me to speculate. But what I do know is that editing the quote was clumsy and insulting, even if in service to a higher ideal.
In the context of specifically advocating for abortion rights, the quote should simply not have been used.
In good faith, reasonable adults could have recognized the quote is inaccurate and also acknowledged that reproductive advocacy should center the experiences of all who need that specific health care, not just cis women.
Instead, this little incident has become a flashpoint for the ongoing efforts to delegitimize trans and non-binary people with the same exhausting claims that have dominated media coverage in recent years, specifically that these trans-affirming efforts are somehow “erasing women”.
Predictably, many conservatives who could barely contain their glee when Justice Ginsburg died flocked to social media to claim that the ACLU was “erasing women” by editing the quote.
There is a not a person with a lick of sense, regardless of political beliefs, who didn’t understand this was about attacking trans people, not calling out the erasure of cis women.
It’s been going on all year as part of a larger national debate on the rights of trans and non-binary people, as more than 30 states have introduced more than 100 pieces of legislation seeking to restrict health care access and participation in sports by trans and non-binary children.
In May, Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, a cis Black woman, used the term “birthing people” during a congressional testimony about the fatal and otherwise harmful consequences experienced by Black people in this country who need access to quality reproductive health care.
Conservative media exploded, of course, claiming that Congresswoman Bush was erasing women and attempting to subvert biological reality.
Never mind that every major medical organization has made it plainly clear that trans people should be affirmed, especially in medical contexts, and that the science around sex and gender are incredibly complicated.
No less than the American Medical Association issued a stern statement in April with the no-bullshit headline: “AMA to states: Stop interfering in health care of transgender children”.
Sigh, I can already hear some folks reading this:
Okay, okay, okay… fine, Charlotte. Yes, words can hurt, but why all this controversy over some hurt feelings?
Because it’s not about hurt feelings. I mean, sure, you should care about respecting others for the sake of respect, but I’m far more concerned with the way this exacerbates the systemic discrimination experienced by LGBTQ people in health care spaces, especially trans and non-binary people.
One survey by the Center for American Progress found that nearly 30 percent of trans and non-binary respondents had been turned away by a physician or other medical provider because of their gender identity, among other harrowing statistics.
TURNED. AWAY. FROM. MEDICAL. CARE.
The same survey found that about 22 percent of transgender and non-binary respondents had delayed or avoided seeking medical care for fear of discrimination, as part of a larger trend of a sizable portion of the LGBTQ people avoiding medical care because of past experiences of discrimination:
“Discrimination in health care settings endangers LGBTQ people’s lives through delays or denials of medically necessary care. For example, after one patient with HIV disclosed to a hospital that he had sex with other men, the hospital staff refused to provide his HIV medication. In another case, a transgender teenager who was admitted to a hospital for suicidal ideation and self-inflicted injuries was repeatedly misgendered and then discharged early by hospital staff. He later committed suicide. Discrimination affects LGBTQ parents as well: In Michigan, an infant was turned away from a pediatrician’s office because she had same-sex parents.”
We’re not talking hypotheticals here. Perhaps the most horrific case I’ve heard was the death of Tyra Hunter, a trans woman based in D.C. who died from treatable injuries that occurred during a car crash because EMTs (and later doctors) refused to properly treat her because of her gender identity.
Anti-LGBTQ discrimination in health care happens all the time, and the reason you don’t hear about it is because of the sheer lack of appropriate focus on anti-LGBTQ discrimination in news coverage.
For example, NYT columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote about this incident on Monday and made several points with which I completely agreed. But missing from her piece was any mention of anti-trans discrimination in medical care. Not a single mention. At all.
Instead, Goldberg seemed to focus on gender-neutral language in pregnancy conversations as a youthful attraction to “liberation” in their own identities. This is true, but it still missed the bigger point: trans-affirming language is about life and death. It’s about who gets turned away from medical providers. It’s about who feels worthy and safe enough to take their broken limbs to the emergency room.
It’s about the way decisions are made over our bodies without our consent and the institutional framing of how we’re defined being ultimately out of our control.
For some reason, this is still lost on a lot of cisgender people.
And it’s killing trans and non-binary people.
Hi, I’m Charlotte Clymer, and this is Charlotte’s Web Thoughts, my Substack. It’s completely free to access and read, but if you feel so moved to support my writing, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription: just $7/month or save money with the $70/annual sub. You can also go way above and beyond by becoming a Founding Member at $210.
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I am glad to have this information. The rights of LGBTQ people need to be protected and you explain why. Thank you for this piece, Charlotte.
Nicely done, Charlotte!