WASHINGTON, D.C., January 12, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A group of homosexual, bisexual, and transgender activists have urged the Supreme Court to overturn a Texas abortion restriction, because transgender men desperately need to have abortions.
Last week, the Obama administration and numerous state attorneys general filed briefs opposing more stringent health and safety regulations imposed by Texas House Bill 2. So did a coalition of more than a dozen LGBT pressure groups and their allies, including the Human Rights Campaign the National LGBTQ Task Force, the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), Immigration Equality, and the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
“The movements for reproductive health, rights and justice are indispensable for LGBTQ people,” their amicus brief states. “Our work, as repro[ductive] and LGBTQ advocates, is inseparable as we are working for the right to live our lives fully and the right to choose how we use our bodies.”
“A ruling that favors discrimination under the guise of ‘women’s health’ would negatively impact LGBTQ people,” said Rea Carey, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, in a statement.
“Many of us — cisgender women, transgender men, intersex and gender non-conforming individuals, among others — can get pregnant and rely on a full range of reproductive health options, including abortion,” Carey continued.
The legal plea puts the justices at the intersection of two competing priorities of the sexual revolution: abortion and transgender theory.
In the last several years, a number of social activists have begun to insist that, due to new theories divorcing gender from biological sex, men are having abortions.
In July 2013, Lauren Rankin wrote an article entitled, “Not Everyone Who Has an Abortion Is a Woman – How to Frame the Abortion Rights Issue.”
Two months earlier, the New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF) said it would no longer present itself as a group fighting for women's rights. “We want to make sure that NYAAF isn’t just working toward every woman’s right to access affordable abortion care, but every person’s right, regardless of their gender,” the group wrote.
Their was one of 45 amicus briefs filed opposing the Texas pro-life law, which has closed more than half of the state's abortion facilities since being signed into law by then-Governor Rick Perry.
The Obama administration said that the regulations of H.B. 2 “disserve the government’s interest in protecting women’s health, and they would close most of the clinics in Texas, leaving many women in that state with a constitutional right that ‘exists in theory but not in fact,’” in the words of U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr.
The bill's supporters say the restrictions are intended to prevent women from experiencing subpar care in substandard facilities.
