How the end of federal abortion rights hurt LGBTQ+ parents

ED JONES // AFP via Getty Images

How the end of federal abortion rights hurt LGBTQ+ parents

Participants march during a Pride Parade in New York City.

When Candace Bond-Theriault had her first child three years ago, federal abortion rights under Roe v. Wade were still the law of the land. When she had her second child this July, Roe was gone, its mandate undone by a 2022 Supreme Court ruling. By this summer, states across the country had enacted their own abortion restrictions or bans. So Bond-Theriault canceled her babymoon trip; leaving Virginia to visit almost any other Southern state seemed too risky. What if she experienced complications while in a place with tight abortion restrictions? 

Her concerns echo those of participants in a new study examining how other queer parents of young children have been impacted by the overturning of Roe, The 19th reports. The mixed-methods study—based on qualitative narratives and data from primarily cisgender bisexual women and nonbinary people assigned female at birth—details how the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has upended relationships, family planning, and the physical and mental health of queer women and nonbinary people across the country. 

Despite its relatively small sample size, the study’s findings are groundbreaking; data on the experiences of LGBTQ+ parents affected by the overturning of Roe are hard to find. Almost half of the participants said they were “very worried” about having to travel long distances to receive reproductive or sexual health care. Others saw the overturning of Roe as a reason not to have any more children, to get sterilized, or to stop having sex altogether. 

Forty-five percent considered moving or took steps to move in response to abortion restrictions and anti-LGBTQ+ policies taking hold in their state, though moving was not an option for everyone since many participants had incomes near or below the poverty threshold. 

“There’s still so little on how queer communities are affected by Dobbs,” said Abbie Goldberg, lead author of the study and an expert on LGBTQ+ families. “Every time I search for it, I find the same things over and over again, and they’re mostly theoretical think pieces.” 

The stories contained in the study show that women and nonbinary people in states with abortion restrictions felt fear and terror, while those in protective states experienced anger and outrage. Some participants, like Eve, from Florida, discussed the specific experiences of being Black and pregnant, a group that has the highest chances of not surviving pregnancy.  

“Being a Black queer woman, the effects of the ruling are outsized for me,” Eve told the researchers. “My demographic already has the worst maternal outcomes. This is essentially a death sentence for many people like me.”

The stories also showcase the significant overlap between reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ rights, said Goldberg, professor of clinical psychology at Clark University and an affiliated scholar at the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. And it’s not just the laws on the books but also the climate people are living in.

Rory, a White nonbinary bisexual parent in Texas, where abortions are banned in all but a few cases, says in the study: “Once I found out I was pregnant with baby #2, currently 22 weeks, I was panicking, and I do worry about giving birth or being unable to carry to term due to a variety of reasons and how it could affect me being in a state where AFABs”— short for assigned female at birth—”have no bodily autonomy.” 

Policies that restrict abortion and gender-affirming care both create feelings of helplessness based on that lack of autonomy, Goldberg said. “They’re responding to a constellation of policies, laws, overlapping climates that implicitly or explicitly denigrate women, trans people, and queer people and the whole idea of bodily autonomy,” she said. 

Data in the new study was collected in the spring of 2023 from 99 LGBTQ+ adults assigned female at birth who had at least one young child. Despite its limited demographic scope, the study, by researchers from Clark University and Harvard Medical School, is essential for researchers and policymakers to understand the concrete impacts of abortion restrictions, said Elana Redfield, federal policy director for the Williams Institute. 

“Here we see just incredible evidence that there is measurable impact amongst LGBTQ communities,” she said.

Unplanned pregnancies are more common among bisexual cisgender women than heterosexual cisgender women. Transmasculine and nonbinary people assigned female at birth also have high rates of unintended pregnancy. LGBTQ+ people, particularly youth, face elevated risks of sexual violence. Poorer birthing outcomes, such as lower birth weight, have been documented among queer women in states with few policies that protect LGBTQ+ people. 

Between the lines lies medical discrimination and a lack of comprehensive sex education, which, in schools, largely focuses on cisgender heterosexual relationships. When LGBTQ+ people go to the doctor, they are more likely to be refused medical services, blamed for their health problems, and discriminated against than cis heterosexual people, according to several studies. Queer women may also be at increased risk for unintended pregnancy due to a higher use of low-efficacy contraceptives. 

For Victoria Kirby York, director of public policy and programs at the National Black Justice Collective, an LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, this new study resurfaced their own fears about Roe being overturned—and it brought back memories of how they were treated during their pregnancy.

“As a Black nonbinary femme, there are ways that our voices and experiences are discounted,” York said. When she gave birth in September 2017, she had eclampsia, a life-threatening condition. But she didn’t find that out until six years after she gave birth. The only plausible explanation is that her doctors didn’t listen. They ignored her concerns involving her seizures and fainting spells. This experience is why York only had one child despite their initial plans to have two children with her wife. 

Due to statewide abortion bans and restrictions, “there are going to be more people put in positions similar to me,” York said. Even as people advocate for themselves and highlight their symptoms, doctors won’t listen—whether it’s racial bias, bias against queer and gender nonconforming people, or fear of breaking the law, they said. 

These overlapping connections between the fights for reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ rights are a cornerstone of Bond-Theriault’s recently published book, “Queering Reproductive Justice: An Invitation.” But she was doing this work long before she published: In 2016, she launched an initiative with the nonprofit National LGBTQ Task Force to combine the fights for LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive rights, including abortion. This new research echoes findings in her own work, she said, and it could serve as a vital resource for policymakers. 

“The feelings and experiences of friends and colleagues of mine are here in this study. And it’s really important now that there’s an actual study to reference,” Bond-Theriault said. “When we’re talking about reproductive health care, whether it be abortion, contraception, IVF, or anything that has to do with reproductive health care, we have to be talking about LGBTQ folks.”

She recalled her own worries during her second pregnancy—about how doctors would treat her if something in her pregnancy went wrong while traveling through states with abortion restrictions. Research has shown that clinicians in states with abortion bans feel ill-equipped to manage pregnancy-related emergencies.

“This entire pregnancy, I was just more cautious,” she said. 

The birth went well, though. A medical provider of color delivered her baby. Her water broke at 8 p.m. and three hours later, her daughter was in her arms. There were no complications. Her recovery has been exponentially better than her first pregnancy—which was traumatic and required an emergency C-section.

“It was just a glorious birth that I wish for every Black woman in the United States,” she said—despite the fact that feeling safe in the hospital room wasn’t a given. She was well aware that doctors routinely don’t take Black women’s pain seriously during labor, ignoring pleas for help that end in extreme pain or death. 

As a Black woman, it is dangerous for her to carry a pregnancy to term in this country. In her view, it’s not possible to talk about pregnancy, abortion, contraception, or IVF without talking about the disproportionately high maternal mortality rate killing pregnant Black people in the United States and the experiences of women of color. But to center the most vulnerable affected groups, LGBTQ+ people need to be part of these conversations, too. 

“To me, centering queer experience will help liberate cisgender women, cisgender heterosexual women, a lot of different people will be included in a liberation victory once we get there if we center LGBTQ folks,” she said.

This story was produced by The 19th and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

---