Trans Liberation, Reproductive Rights, & Democracy

The Right’s Attack on Rights

This year has seen a barrage of over 500 bills introduced in state legislatures across the nation, all aimed at attacking trans and queer people. Meanwhile, the right wing is on a mission to enforce nationwide abortion bans, already successful in nearly two dozen states. Voting rights are also under siege, with racial gerrymandering and laws curbing early voting and mail-in ballots. In Georgia, offering water to voters in line is now illegal. Alabama is refusing to comply with a Supreme Court order regarding voting rights for Black citizens. The right’s attack on what they misname “critical race theory” is really an attack on people’s ability to learn the U.S. right’s history of opposing democracy, from slavery to segregation, to anti-suffragism, to denying bodily autonomy.

This struggle for reproductive rights, transgender liberation, and democracy is absolutely crucial for everyone in the working class. Let’s break it down:

Unveiling the Attacks

The assault on bodily autonomy is tightly intertwined with the capitalist system. As Karina Garcia explains in “Women, Capitalism, and the Ongoing Attacks on Bodily Autonomy and Reproductive Rights”1:
“It is not as a conspiracy for profits, but as a form of political rule based on disciplining and intimidating one section of poor and working people, distracting and confusing others, and finally winning over and satisfying other layers.”

This assault is spearheaded by reactionary elements in society, funded by the ruling class, and executed through governmental power. This includes leveraging the undemocratic Supreme Court and various levels of government, be it state, local, or federal.

It also includes state violence. Bans on abortion and trans rights enable the long arm of the police and the carceral state to intrude into the lives of everyday working people. As they introduce new methods of control, with alarming tactics like inspecting children’s bodies and demanding the reporting of menstrual cycles for sports participation, they lay the groundwork for further violations of personal freedom and expression.

The United States is “now in fascism’s legal phase,” according to Jason Stanley. Writing in The Guardian2, he says, “Fascist lies have begun to restructure institutions, notably electoral infrastructure and law.”
This right-wing movement is well aware that their stance is in the minority. Therefore, their goal is to eliminate even the limited democratic avenues available to the working class. They understand that given the opportunity, working people will rally to uphold their rights.

DSA’s Role in the Struggle

Chapters and working groups within the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are stepping up together to play a vital role in the fight for trans rights, reproductive rights, and democracy.

The most significant source of our power to defend and expand reproductive healthcare and trans rights is the building of a mass movement. This movement brings together diverse segments of the working class using tactics such as mass protests, civil disobedience, and labor and tenant action, along with working-class electeds ready to call out every injustice against bodily autonomy.

In 2022, YDSA, the youth wing of DSA, passed “For Abortion Rights, Bodily Autonomy, and Socialist Trans Liberation.” Since then:

• In the first state to criminalize abortion after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, YDSA at University of Missouri won affordable Plan B on campus.
• YDSA at ETSU organized the “Can’t Drag Us Down” drag show and story hour in protest of anti-trans bills prohibiting drag shows and gender-affirming care for trans youth, followed by a “No Hate In Our State Block Party” protest against anti-trans political commentator Michael Knowles speaking at ETSU.
• Wesleyan YDSA in Connecticut’s pressure campaign won free emergency contraceptives for students and for the University to cover all abortion-related costs that students’ insurance doesn’t cover, including transportation.
• University of North Texas YDSA organized to improve access to hormone replacement treatment (HRT) care on campus; they won a commitment to training in transgender healthcare for employees of the on-campus health center and to consider transgender care experience in hiring.
• New York University (NYU) YDSA won free abortions and Mifepristone for all in-network students.
• University of Louisville YDSA won increased funding to the university’s LGBTQ+ center.

This summer, the DSA national convention voted to, in coordination with YDSA, prepare for and launch a nationwide fighting campaign for reproductive rights and trans liberation and to defend abortion rights, trans people, and democracy.

Preparation for this campaign starts in Fall 2023, with a campaign launch in January 2024 and a national day of action in Spring 2024. DSA’s National Political Committee will collaborate with chapters and elected officials across the United States to construct a coordinated campaign of ballot initiatives, legislative bills, and public pressure to advance bodily autonomy and defend democracy.

DSA’s campaign will face the mounting attacks on reproductive rights and the ongoing discrimination against trans people head on. This includes but is not limited to highlighting and fighting discrimination in housing, at work, in healthcare, and in collective bargaining agreements that do not protect trans and reproductive healthcare.

We commit ourselves and the socialist movement to the struggle against all barriers to liberation. Autonomy and freedom aren’t just for a select few—they’re the rights of cis women, trans people (non-binary and binary), and gender nonconforming individuals, who are all part of the working class. Their liberation and autonomy cannot be cleaved from socialist struggle.

Join our movement: 1) Visit dsausa.org/join to become a member, 2) attend our local chapter meetings to get involved with our work on the ground, 3) if you’re a student, join YDSA at ETSU, too, for on-campus organizing!

Northeast TN DSA meets on the second Wednesday of every month. Meetings are hybrid: you can attend in person or over Zoom. Contact northeasttndsa@gmail.com for a registration link or meeting location.

YDSA at ETSU meets every Wednesday. Contact ydsaetsu@gmail.com for more information.

1 Breaking the Chains magazine, Vol 4, No 2 & reprinted online December 24, 2022 at https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/women-capitalism-and-the-ongoing-attack-against-bodily-autonomy-and-reproductive-rights
2 ”America is now in fascism’s legal phase,” Jason Stanley, December 22, 2021, The Guardian.