ABSTRACT
Transgender and non-binary (trans) people often face distinct barriers in realising their right to have a child. These barriers are underpinned by cisnormativity, a set of assumptions and beliefs that centres cisgender (non-trans) people’s bodies and experiences as the ‘norm’ in reproductive contexts. Consequently, trans people and their reproductive bodies have been presumed to be incapable, unfit or not worthy of reproducing or becoming parents. Drawing on tenets of reproductive justice, this chapter provides an overview of some of the ways that cisnormativity operates and limits trans people’s reproductive autonomy; namely, through media representations of pregnancy, the state regulation of reproductive bodies and definitions of parenthood, and in the lack of access to gender-inclusive fertility and pregnancy information and care. Trans rights movements’ growing resistance to cisnormativity, and the structural inclusion of gender diversity in reproductive discourses, are necessary to ensure that people of all genders can achieve reproductive autonomy free from coercion or discrimination.
