EVANSTON – Illinois' prestigious Northwestern University professors wrote in the school's online news source last week that Texas' new ban on aborting babies with a heartbeat could negatively affect pregnant women who identify as a man.
In the Northwestern Now, the story says:
A trans man living in Texas may choose to conceal his transgender status to coworkers, friends and even in-laws to protect himself from violence and gender dysphoria. As his abdomen grows due to a pregnancy for which he can no longer legally get an abortion, however, keeping identity private in public spaces may become next to impossible.
The abortion ban in Texas imposes the burden of pregnancy — and with it, the burden of potential dysphoria, being outed or violence — on trans and gender nonconforming individuals without viable alternative choices.
Ricky Hill, identified as "research assistant professor at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing, Feinberg School of Medicine" said,
When we put restrictions on this piece of health care, we’re going to start putting restrictions on other pieces of health care. I wish we looked at abortion as being health care and not as a moral issue and gender affirming care as being health care and not a moral issue – things that are only between the physician and their patient.
Hill went on to say,
I’ve been doing this work on the ground for over a decade including in Oklahoma, and especially in the South it’s easy for people to say, ‘well, what do you expect, it’s Texas?' I think the nation has to pay attention to what’s happening in Texas, because now every state is looking at how they can do this. It’s really about the ways the right has built a broad coalition, and now is the opportunity for us to do the same and realize this is not just about abortion, this is about any medical decision.
The Texas law bans abortions after six weeks, or when the baby's heartbeat is detected.
