Resisting Transphobia in Edinburgh joined Abortion Rights Scotland’s action on Saturday 27th April 2024, to underline the reality that abortion is a human right, that trans liberation includes reproductive rights, and that women’s liberation and trans liberation are overlapping chapters of the same story.

Each year, SPUC (Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child) organises a ‘pro-life chain’ which gathers on Lothian Road, Edinburgh to oppose abortion access and every year Abortion Rights Scotland come together on the opposite side of the road to show support for free, safe and legal abortion in Scotland, and beyond. While the number of attendees presented by the SPUC action outnumbered that of Abortion Rights Scotland, public support for the pro-choice camp clearly surpassed that for the anti-abortion.

It is important to loudly and definitively challenge those who threaten to remove our rights, and today very much demonstrated that these rights must be consistently defended. Prominently present and confrontational in the SPUC crowd were familiar far-right faces from Posie Parker’s recent ‘Let Women Speak’ event earlier this month. This further highlights the crossover in the anti-abortion and anti-trans movements and the need to join together to oppose these figures.

The need for intersectional activism is at its most evident when supposedly separate liberation movements are opposed by the same individuals, reminding us that it is all the same struggle.