Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump debated on Sept. 10. The debate left a lot off the table for the LGBTQ community, particularly on discussions for accessible, affordable healthcare and abortion access. Abortion, gender affirming care, and reproductive care are inextricably tied to bodily autonomy, say many LGBTQ New Jersey activists.
Activists say this doesn’t mean they’ve lost hope. They believe that the 2024 campaign trail has more to reveal to the voters.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie — former Trump debate coach and governor when the New Jersey guidance on transgender students policy was implemented — made an appearance after the debate with ABC News. He gave his feedback on the overall “winner” of the rigorous on-stage thrash. “Whoever did the debate prep for Donald Trump should be fired,” Christie said on ABC, calling Trump “unprepared.” He did, however, commend the performance of Harris.
Harris, while impassioned, only spoke to women who need abortion care said activists. Trump, on the other hand, spoke about abortion with disinformation, which was fact-checked on the spot by ABC hosts Linsey Davis and David Muir.
“Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion,” Harris said to Trump. “That’s not happening! That’s insulting to the women of America.”
She was responding to Trump’s inaccurate statement: “The mother meets with the doctor,” Trump said. “They take care of the baby. They wrap the baby beautifully, and the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.”
“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” ABC’s Linsey Davis fact-checked.
“A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next,” Harris said, responding to Trump’s abortion claims. “That is immoral. And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree, the government, and Donald Trump, certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”
In 2021, the last year in which the CDC reported a national roundup of abortions, it found there were 625,978 abortions in the 46 states and the District of Columbia, with available data for that year. This was an increase from 597,355 in those states and D.C. in 2020. Both years are from prior to Roe’s overturning by the Supreme Court, according to the Pew Research Center.
coalition groups June 24, 2024 in Trenton; photo courtesy of Garden State Equality
Several studies point to evidence that transgender, gender expansive, and nonbinary people also need abortions. Of 450 surveyed “transgender and gender nonconforming adults who were assigned female sex-at-birth 28 (6%) reported having at least one unplanned pregnancy and 10 (32%) ended in abortion,” according to the National Institute on Health (NIH).
In a mixed-method version of the study, 197 masculine identified people who were assigned female sex at birth were surveyed. Of those participants, 32 (16%) reported 60 lifetime pregnancies, of which 7 (12%) ended in abortion,” per the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in a study published by the National Institute of Health.
“During last week’s presidential debate, we heard dialogue on abortion care and access to reproductive care, but the candidates did not address transgender healthcare or gender-affirming care at length. That said, just because we did not hear more about these rights during the debate, that doesn’t mean that they won’t be a priority in future policy conversations,” ACLU-NJ Executive Director Amol Sinha said to Out in Jersey in a statement.
Additionally, Sinha added that as the ACLU and the American people evaluate each candidate’s platform on the road to the election, gender affirming care for transgender people, abortion, and reproductive rights must be part of the conversation about bodily autonomy. ACLU-NJ says bodily autonomy is “a fundamental right for every individual.”
In June, Garden State Equality, ACLU of New Jersey, League of Women Voters New Jersey, and more than 70 other groups introduced the The Reproductive Freedom and Health Equity Bill Package here in Trenton. The package aims to protect “patients and providers, supports bodily autonomy, and proactively modernizes and codifies various elements of reproductive health care access and provision in New Jersey,” say the bils proponents.
“The biggest part of protecting gender affirming care is the same as the biggest part of protecting reproductive care — to ensure that our providers are protected for providing necessary vital and often lifesaving care. Our bodies are our own to make decisions on, and we need to ensure that people and agencies providing care are free to do so without fear of legal persecution,” Lauren Albrecht, Director of Advocacy and Organizing for Garden State Equality, said in a statement.
“It is clear that Harris and Trump have vastly different views on these rights, and the ACLU is prepared, regardless of who wins, to continue to fight for healthcare and bodily autonomy for all,” Sinha said.
