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While the Supreme Court ruled that trans people are protected from employment discrimination, we still have a long way to go. Did you know that nine states requires trans people to be sterilized to change the gender marker on our driver's license? https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-not-just-japan-many-us-states-require-transgender-people-get-sterilized
Those states are IA, KY, TN, SC, GA, AL, LA, TX, and OK. Several other states have unwritten, unclear, or inconsistent policies. https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/identity_document_laws
FIFTEEN states require trans people to be sterilized in order to change the gender marker on their birth certificate. Idaho, Ohio, and Tenessee specifically make this impossible. https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/identity_document_laws
Many countries still have similar requirements. In 2019, the Japanese Supreme Court upheld a law saying that people requesting a gender change on their paperwork must have "their original reproductive organs, including testes or ovaries, removed." https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/japan-s-supreme-court-upholds-transgender-sterilization-requirement-n962721
A German advocacy group says as many as 10,000 people in that country alone were forced into sterilizing surgeries before being able to change their identification paperwork. Sweden recently compensated trans people it had forced to undergo sterilization. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bvgxdv/trans-people-coerced-into-sterilization-by-governments-seek-money-apology
Some trans people do not want to have children in a way that is inconsistent with their gender identity. But for those who want to preserve the option, fertility treatment before sterilizing hormone therapy is often unaffordable in the U.S., and rarely covered by insurance.
Transgender folks who bank sperm may pay as much as $1500 upfront, plus $500 a year therafter. In a community where unemployment is 3x the national average, this is often prohibitive - and costs for trans folks preverving eggs are even higher. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-transgender-reproduction-20180308-story.html
The fertility preservation options that exists are imperfect. Many transgender women have lower-viability sperm before even beginning transition, but cannot find this out until giving a sample. https://www.practiceupdate.com/content/asrm-2018-transgender-women-have-lower-sperm-counts-even-before-hormone-therapy/74521
We then face the heart-wrenching decision of whether to delay hormone therapy or treatment (and the ability to have matching legal paperwork) in order to try again, or to preclude our chance at reproduction.
While options like womb transplants may someday allow transgender women to become pregnant, such treatment would likely be prohibitively expensive. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/transgender-women-should-entitled-womb-13972102
This has all been treated as a secondary issue. Cis people don't tend to think about whether trans people should become parents, and historically we have not been trusted around kids because of bigotted stereotypes around 'recruiting' and other manufactured moral panic.
But states should not require sterilization for identification that matches one's gender identity, and health insurance companies should cover fertility preservation for all people!
