Michael Pruitt ‘24
Guest Writer
Before diving into the content of Friday’s panel on reproductive health, the events leading up to it deserve their own column inches. From the panel’s title to the slogans used in advertising, it stood unambiguously in response to the Federalist Society’s conversation with Erika Bachiochi. Members of If/When/How and Lambda Law Alliance jointly developed the panel over the course of three short days in response to Bachiochi’s opposition to both reproductive healthcare access and to legal protections for trans, nonbinary, and intersex people. Both If/When/How and a group of trans and nonbinary law students published open letters that put their lived experiences, Bachiochi’s record, and the national political moment—with Roe under scrutiny by the Supreme Court and a wave of states proposing anti-trans legislation—in conversation.[1] Chloe Fife ’22 touched on this background in a brief introduction for the forty-some-odd in-person attendees and the larger Zoom audience before turning the event over to Professor Coughlin, who moderated.
Professor Coughlin began by interrogating the title of the Federalist Society’s event, including the intended meaning of key terms like “women” and “equality.” With these questions in mind, the conversation turned to introducing each panelist and allowing them to discuss their work.
Dr. Chris Barcelos, a social scientist teaching gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, noted that the theme of the panel linked to their own scholarly work, where they have found that efforts at regulating abortion and regulating trans bodies are fundamentally intertwined. “Both,” Dr. Barcelos said, “are attempts to deny bodily autonomy and attempts to define the futures of others.”
Ting Ting Cheng, the current director of the Equal Rights Amendment Project at Columbia Law School, spoke next, beginning by providing a short history on the 100-year effort[2] to pass the ERA, the attendant thorny legal issues of the ERA’s current status, and the history of unfortunate decisions on “which voices to include and which to exclude.” She noted that ERA activists pushing for ratification in the ’70s claimed that the amendment wouldn’t provide special legal protections for abortions. Cheng stated that these claims were false then, and remain false now, but they presented a salient reminder of the importance of focusing on issues of equity while working for equality. “We care about winning,” she said, “but also how we win.”
Tannis Fuller, who runs the Blue Ridge Abortion Fund, a grassroots organization that provides financial and logistical assistance to support abortions, spoke last. A poster in the background of Fuller’s office read, in block capitals, “Funding abortion is a radical act of resistance and community care.” She engaged directly with Professor Coughlin’s question on the meaning of “women’s equality” in relation to abortion. “If we’re all down in the mud together, well, I don’t want to be in the mud,” she said. According to Fuller, people should aim for liberation rather than equality, and “access to reproductive health, the whole spectrum of fertility care, is central to liberation.” Abortion and other reproductive care, she continued, should be seen as tied to family and community so that by improving access to care, people are able to “unify different streams of their life and become whole” rather than dividing their lives “into separate buckets.”
Each speaker echoed the themes of their introductions in answering questions from the audience. When asked about the role of lawyers in addressing legal barriers to trans folks’ access to reproductive healthcare, Dr. Barcelos stated that “the law isn’t going to totally save us,” referring to the frequent gap between legal protections on paper and realities on the ground. By example, they noted how the Affordable Care Act’s ban on gender identity discrimination hasn’t kept many insurers from denying coverage for gender-affirming treatment.
Cheng considered the possibility that the ERA could be used in an anti-classification argument to block laws designed to help women and trans people. She noted that unlike the Fourteenth Amendment, the language of the ERA doesn’t require intent, making this interpretation weaker.
Fuller spoke about the possible externalities of increased restrictions on abortion. With increased scrutiny of abortions, she claimed, we also get increased scrutiny and criminalization of pregnancy outcomes like miscarriages, which disproportionately impacts people of color, trans people, and poor people.
When asked how to combat the stigma associated with abortion, sex, and gender, Fuller said that the solution was talking with our children early about sex and gender. “When we’re comfortable in our identities,” she said, “we can more easily talk about sexual health, and when we’re comfortable with that we can more easily talk about abortion.”
Both Dr. Barcelos and Fuller addressed Bachiochi’s belief that abortion denigrates the role of mothers in society. Dr. Barcelos noted the cognitive dissonance in the fact that over half of all abortions were obtained by people who already had one birth, while Fuller rejected the framing of abortion and parenthood as binary opposites rather than paired concepts.
To close the event, each speaker offered their advice to the audience on ways to create change. Dr. Barcelos encouraged listeners to work with their pocketbook by donating to their local abortion funds, which create vital infrastructure connecting patients to limited care resources. Cheng emphasized the importance of democracy’s roots, stating that listeners should look into meaningful local work and ballot initiatives. Fuller echoed the value of local grassroots organizing, stating that something as simple as putting a can of green beans in the local community fridge “can feel good even when everything else feels like crap.” Professor Coughlin joined the audience after for discussion, coffee, and the best canelé in Central Virginia.
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jhu5ey@virginia.edu
[1] If/When/How’s letter and the trans and nonbinary students’ letter can be found at bit.ly/uvaletter_iwh and bit.ly/uvaletter_tnb respectively.
[2] Well, more like 98.5 years, but that doesn’t have the same ring.