Reproductive Rights

Why should LGBTQ people care about reproductive health? Because LGBTQ people use birth control, have abortions, get tested for HIV, get screened for breast and cervical cancers, use fertility treatments, and transgender people need access to a full range of health services to be their whole selves. Those who attack efforts and organizations that provide access to these services and resources have a world-view that disavows empowered decisions about reproductive health and aims to limit LGBTQ people from making empowered decisions about how to build their own families.

We all need reproductive rights and justice because our respective hard won legal rights as LGBTQ and as a reproductive rights movements, respectively, have long been intertwined with Supreme Court decisions dating back over 40 years. From Roe v. Wade, to last year’s Hobby Lobby ruling, to the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage decision, our ability to live our lives fully and to not be discriminated against are dependent on mutual progress on these two issues.

The National LGBTQ Task Force is a strong and steadfast ally of the reproductive rights movement. We believe ours is a shared struggle to choose whom we love, to create our families, and to live free of discrimination. We also believe our movements must travel together on the path to justice and equality, to human dignity, to a world where the lives of women and the lives of LGBTQ people are no longer under attack and systemically placed in harm’s way.