Former First Lady Michelle Obama on Saturday warned that the GOP will “strip” transgender “womxn” from having the ability to abort their unborn children, according a report by the Daily Mail.
Obama shared the claim on an Instagram post where she urged her followers to vote in midterm primary elections in states that may ban abortion, due to the possibility that the Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade in the near future.
“Once Roe v. Wade is overturned…State lawmakers will have the power to strip womxn of the right to make decisions about their bodies and their healthcare,” Obama’s post read.
“The leaked draft decision could mean that any day the right to abortion. will no longer be protected under federal law – triggering extreme anti-abortion laws in 13 states, and other states are sure to follow,” the post continued.
The Daily Mail noted that Obama’s apparent use of the word “womxn” had “sparked debate” among users online, as the term is typically used to describe transgender women.
Michelle Obama’s original Saturday Instagram post — SOURCE: Daily Mail
However, the slide containing the term has since mysteriously disappeared from Obama’s post.
The post still exists, but it appears the offending slide was removed. Valiant News independently confirmed Instagram users can delete individual images from a post without deleting the entire post.
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According to The Womxn’s Center for Success at UC Irvine, the word “is one of a few lexical and social phenomena, including the adoption of ‘x’ in naming gender non-conforming individuals, genderqueer folxs, two spirit people, femmes, transgender folxs, and non-binary people.”
“The ‘x’ creates a space for women and femme folks that aren’t cis women, meaning it tells people that ALL women-identifying people are being included and addressed. This is a helpful distinction especially when certain spaces align with white feminists and/or trans exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) ideology,” reads a description on Womxn’s Center of Success website.
However, the organization also notes that “using ‘womxn’ to refer to trans women implies they aren’t actually women. Reducing them to an ‘other’ to be tolerated isn’t actually more inclusive.” The term would, thus, seem to be commonly used to describe transgender women specifically.
It remains unclear how transgender “womxn” born into biologically male bodies would be able to have an abortion, as they are unable to become pregnant in the first place.
In the caption of her post, Obama used the typical spelling of the word women, noting that “It’s been a tough couple of weeks since we saw the leaked SCOTUS draft opinion on abortion.”
“If it comes to pass, we may soon live in a country where millions of women — not to mention our children and grandchildren — lose the right to make decisions about their bodies and their health,” she wrote.
