Bans on abortion and gender-affirming care (“GAC”) have been passed across the country and overlap in many states. But the similarities between these healthcare bans extend beyond time and place. Bans on abortion and GAC rely on similar flawed assumptions about biology and destiny, eschew medical consensus regarding best practice care, and rely on similar enforcement mechanisms. Of paramount concern, these healthcare bans perpetuate the same harm: a deprivation of bodily autonomy. Because these healthcare bans rely on the same legal foundation, advocates for reproductive and LGBTQIA+ justice need to work in tandem to attack abortion and GAC bans at the root. The threat healthcare bans pose cannot be addressed in siloes.

This Note examines the connections between conservative efforts to ban abortion and GAC to underscore the need for a coordinated, cross-movement response to secure protections for bodily autonomy. Beginning with a discussion of the right to bodily autonomy and the dire consequences of banning abortion and GAC, this Note tracks the parallel timelines and tactics of reproductive healthcare bans by using Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee—states that have litigated challenges to GAC bans in circuit courts—as case studies of a national trend. This Note concludes with a discussion of strategies for intermovement collaboration to advance healthcare protections for people who can get pregnant and people who seek GAC, focusing on pathways to secure a right to bodily autonomy.