TransLash Media has teamed up with the National LGBTQ Task Force to for a gripping three-part video series titled “Trans Bodies, Trans Choices.”
In the series, transgender individuals speak out about their abortion experiences.
Today, the first part of the series titled “My Abortion Saved My Life,” premiered on Youtube. In the video, Black transgender activist, Cazembe Murphy Jackson, details his abortion experience.
Before transitioning to a male, Jackson came out as gay at just 12 years old.
“The day I found out that I was pregnant… I didn’t know how to kill myself. I just knew I wanted to die. My abortion saved my life,” says the activist. “I came out as a lesbian and my mama was like, ‘we need to talk to the pastor.’ And we went in his office and he was like ‘being gay is abomination, and you have to deny any feeling of that or you will burn in hell,”
The Supreme Court is still waiting to hear a case on abortion that could overturn Roe v. Wade. However, on Friday, the Texas Supreme Court effectively shut down a federal challenge to the state’s controversial ban on abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy.
While the transgender community has been left out of the conversation, numerous anti-trans bills have surfaced across the country over recent months.
On Tuesday, Idaho’s House of Representatives passed a bill seeking to ban out-of-state medical treatments for trans youths.
TransLash Media is a nonprofit organization committed to supporting trans/non-binary/intersex/two-spirit people through trans stories to save trans lives.
In an op-ed published by TIME last year, Imara Jones, founder and CEO of TransLash Media, explained that we cannot leave trans women out of the conversation.
“Black trans women are essential to creating the future, because when everything fails you, you’re more clearly able to reimagine what it would look like if things worked,” she wrote. “This is why Black trans women are, in many cases, the most visionary and progressive leaders within social justice movements. As a leader of the Stonewall uprising, Marsha P. Johnson understood the link between Black civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights and trans rights, and was crucial in the struggle for liberation for all of them.”
