Abortion should be more accessible for LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender, nonbinary, intersex, genderfluid, and gender non conforming people. Abortion is harder to get access to for transgender people, (used here as an umbrella term for all not identifying as their birth sex), and it is a real issue, especially in the US. In a country where abortion rights even for cisgender women is an issue, transgender abortion rights are even harder to come by.

According to an article from BMJ Journals (BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health), “Gender-inclusive services and training for health providers is necessary to provide safe and accessible abortion care and overcome generations of mistrust held by the LGBTIQA+ community.” The first part of this states that gender inclusive services and training is needed for safe abortion care, which means that research, education, and training are all mandatory for safe abortion care for transgender people. Having this could prevent unsafe abortion attempts, which sometimes result in physical and mental health strains.

The second part of this quote, stating that these things could positively help mistrust of abortion rights by the LGBTQ+ community, means that the LGBTQ+ community already considers abortion care for them untrustworthy, and making it safer and more accessible could also help stop and/or decrease the mistrust of abortion healthcare. This could even result in the organizations providing this care gaining more profit off of more LGBTQ+ people using their services, having both sides benefiting from the research, training, and more.

Another article, from Springer Link, after conducting a study on access to abortion for transgender people, states “Stakeholders described provider knowledge gaps and a perceived lack of medical education relevant to the SRH needs of TGE people.” This directly shows that there is not enough medical education having to do with transgender abortion and contraception rights. Immediately after this quote, the article states “Stakeholders reported a range of barriers to contraception and abortion access for TGE people AFAB, including inability to afford services, lack of gender-affirming clinicians, difficulty obtaining insurance coverage, and misconceptions about fertility and unplanned pregnancy risk.” This only highlights how much harder it is for transgender, non binary and gender non conforming individuals to receive equal reproductive healthcare. As stated, there are many barriers to this healthcare.

Some may argue that it is too expensive to provide equal and gender affirming reproductive healthcare for transgender people, especially since they are only a small part of the US population. However, this percentage (0.6% of those ages 13+), includes over 1.5 million people. If a third of the transgender population was injured due to abortion and reproductive health care related issues, that is over 0.5 million people, and many transgender people already have issues with this. (Percentages are provided by Williams Institute School of Law in June of 2022).

In conclusion, transgender, non binary and gender non-conforming people need healthier, safer, and more accessible reproductive health care. Doing this would lower injury rates related to this issue, lower mistrust of abortion rights in the LGBTQ+ community, and help better educate the population and medical persons on such issues. LGBTQ+ people need better reproductive healthcare rights, and they need it now.