To anyone following the struggle against right-wing assaults on Planned Parenthood and reproductive rights, it is no secret that Planned Parenthood is a crucial provider of health care throughout the country for pregnant people and people looking to receive birth control. These services are ones that people often associate with “women’s health”—because the vast majority of the recipients of pregnancy-related services are cisgender (not transgender) women. However, the full scope of Planned Parenthood’s help reaches people of all genders. Transgender men and nonbinary trans people can also receive birth control, prenatal care, abortions and reproductive health care. People of all genders need access to testing and checkups. However, a lesser-known fact about Planned Parenthood is that a great deal of the health care they provide is specific to transgender people’s needs.
Planned Parenthood does crucial work for the trans community
Some Planned Parenthood clinics provide hormone replacement therapy. While not all locations do this, many that do are the only places trans people can get this important treatment. Much like abortions and birth control, hormones are extremely hard to come by in states that have cracked down on centers providing access to reproductive health care. In right-wing states, Planned Parenthood is often the only place for many miles where people can get access to all of these services. And just as when clinical abortions are unavailable, which leads to dangerous self-induced abortions, so trans people without access to hormones often resort to unsafe methods of receiving them—through self-medication and the black market.
The testing and preventative care that Planned Parenthood provides is generally inclusive and safe for trans people. Screenings and treatment are given based on medical need, not gender label. For example, PP provides pap smears and other vaginal and uterine health exams to trans men and nonbinary people in a sensitive way: the procedures are not conflated with womanhood, and men or women professionals are available to perform them on request. HIV testing is also inclusive and judgment-free. Very importantly, if a person tests positive for any illness or has any cause for concern, Planned Parenthood refers them to low-cost providers if Planned Parenthood itself cannot provide treatment. This is crucial to trans people because the poverty rates in our communities are horrific: a trans person is four times more likely to be living in poverty than a cis person, and that rate goes up for trans people of color, up to six times for some demographics.
Planned Parenthood has also been proactive about improving its services for the trans community, as well as fighting for safe health care for trans people across the country. PP has responded in exemplary solidarity to trans people organizing to demand better health care. Instead of doing what many health care providers did and reacting negatively to pressure from the community, PP launched an initiative called Out For Health, which is a broad set of resources aimed at providing the LGBTQ+ community with safe, affordable and comprehensive health care. Out For Health even created an app called Pee In Peace, which locates safe bathrooms for trans people to use.
Planned Parenthood also provides assistance to people who need to navigate the complicated and unaccommodating legal system of changing their name or gender marker. Besides providing comprehensive information on how to do it, Planned Parenthood’s workers are trained to sign off on any papers a patient needs to get their documents changed or proceed with their transition.
Trans youth, survivors and organizers stand with PP
Liberation News interviewed people from around the country who have received treatment at Planned Parenthood. A trans man who had to go to PP for HIV testing in 2010 told this writer: “Planned Parenthood is the only place I’ve ever been that provided inclusive language on their forms: a patient could choose from male, female, trans woman, trans man, other or neither.”
One young person wrote: “As a nonbinary person, PP is the first medical office in my life that I don’t dread going to. … Where I live, PP is the only [informed] consent clinic, and the doctor in charge of trans services there also does outreach to other medical facilities to teach them how to treat trans people properly. If it wasn’t for PP, I’d have to drive two hours to San Francisco for a consent clinic, and I’d feel less safe at other doctor’s offices around here.”
Princess Harmony Rodriguez, a trans woman and author with Black Girl Dangerous, wrote: “Trans women, particularly black trans women and other trans women of color, are at a dangerously high risk for HIV. What’s more, trans women—because of economic inequalities—often cannot afford HIV medications, so HIV ends up progressing to AIDS. Stigma is one of the reasons why people, trans or not, don’t get tested. But Planned Parenthood provides stigma-free and sex-positive HIV testing to trans women.”
A nonbinary and intersex survivor of sexual assault told Liberation News: “Planned Parenthood was the only place where I felt remotely safe undergoing procedures that can be extremely terrifying and traumatic to me because of my PTSD and dysphoria. The workers at PP were very conscious of my trauma, medical history and pronouns. They let me take as long as I needed with the procedures and even told me it was OK if I had a violent reaction to anything that triggered me. I have been going to Planned Parenthood for low-cost hormones and other treatment since before I came out. When I came out to the PP workers, they doubled the time they spent asking me about my safety at home, work and school, because they knew how at risk trans people are.” The survivor went on to say: “I’m an organizer in the trans community, as well as in many other struggles. LGBTQ people are standing up for Planned Parenthood because these clinics provide crucial services to us that we often can’t get anywhere else. We fight for reproductive rights for all because we know what it’s like to be denied everything—including basic recognition of our humanity.”
Planned Parenthood supporters must support trans people
Planned Parenthood’s support and internal improvement on trans issues has been growing along with the movement for trans rights and liberation. Despite increasing awareness and support for Planned Parenthood in response to the ongoing misogynistic attacks on clinics, many people are still unaware of everything Planned Parenthood stands for. When fighting back against right-wing assaults on reproductive rights and health care, we need to be vocal that we are in solidarity with all people affected by these assaults, especially the most vulnerable among us. Planned Parenthood is a leader in providing healthcare to LGBTQ people. When Planned Parenthood is under attack, people of all genders are under attack because the clinics provide safety and services to everyone without discrimination. This means that people of all genders need to stand together, fight misogyny, fight transphobia, fight for all of us whose safety and basic rights to reproductive health care are threatened by both legislative and terrorist attacks. United, we can defend our rights and defend those whose doors stay open, no matter what, to make sure we all have access to safe, inclusive, empowering health care.
