Reproductive injustice, trans rights, and eugenics

Abstract

This article explores how the recognition of the gender identity of trans people can have negative consequences on their reproductive health and rights. First, it argues that, while both the right to gender identity and the right to sexual and reproductive health are part of the indivisible core of human rights, in practice trans people are forced to choose between them. Understanding this scenario requires focusing on the eugenic dimensions of trans policies, even in states where the recognition of a gender identity other than that assigned at birth is not tied to surgical or hormonal compromises. The concept of "passive eugenics", coined over twenty years ago by James Bowman, offers a valuable key in this respect. Second, the paper highlights some factors that hinder a successful approach to the reproductive health and rights of trans people. These factors include: the normative imageries about the reproductive capacities and desires of trans people, representations about pregnancy and "womanhood", and the form taken by identity politics in contemporary feminist movements. The attention given as a priority (if not exclusively) to initiatives for the legalisation of voluntary abortion, understood as a right pertaining to (cis) women, offers a significant example of these difficulties. Finally, the paper advocates the adoption of a reproductive justice approach to work on sexual and reproductive health and rights, arguing that it has, among other virtues, that of challenging the binary matrix that characterises Western thought.

COVID-19 and Abortion: Making Structural Violence Visible

“…43 Doctors-while expressing discomfort around later gestation abortions-justify them for younger pregnant people living in deprivation, treating them differently than older and more educated womxn who are considered "valued" reproductive citizens. This individualization and "responsibilization" 45 rhetoric is also evident in how "othered" persons (e.g., Indigenous and Two-Spirit persons, 46 sex workers, 47 trans and nonbinary persons, 48 migrants 49 and those living with HIV/AIDS 50 ) are treated by structures that replicate violent institutions of reproductive discrimination. It contributes to an "inflexible tension between cultural ideals and women's lived realities," 30 which perpetuates structural violence.…”

‘Bad choices’: Unintended pregnancy and abortion in nurses’ and counsellors’ accounts of providing pre-abortion counselling

“…The idea/fear that abortion is 'over-relied upon' by abortion-seekers to regulate their reproduction, and this study's findings, should be situated within a normative logic that constructs abortion as antithetical to (foetal) motherhood and (cis) womanhood, since abortion seekers are normatively positioned as/assumed to be (cis/non-trans) girls/women who are always already mothers by virtue of being pregnant, and are therefore expected and judged for failing to conform to the patriarchal ideals of (cis) womanhood/motherhood (Millar, 2017;Radi, 2020). This logic underpins normative constructions of abortion as being at odds with moral values; unpleasant at best and harmful and dangerous at worst; and tolerable only as a last resort in the absence of more 'preferable' pregnancy resolution alternatives, and when contraceptives have failed (Hoggart, 2015;Kumar et al, 2009;Millar, 2017).…”

Gender Transition: Is There a Right to Be Forgotten?

“…It is stated that the relinquishment of reproductive capacity is no longer a prerequisite for gender transition, recognising that transgender people desire to be parents and are not intrinsically wrong parents merely due to their non-normative gender identities expressions. This perspective is based on equality and human dignity [ 13 , 32 , 45 , 59 ]. Researchers might have to rely on medical records to study how health issues manifest differently based on biological sex at birth [ 43 ].…”