A few bad people who hate others because they think putting others down means they win picked a fight on the playground. They got other people on the playground to join them because they yelled the loudest and some kids thought that the louder you yelled, the more right you were. The people they were yelling about just wanted to be on the playground too, but the yelling people didn't want them on the playground, so despite the fact that they didn't want to, the people being yelled at played a competitive game against the people who were yelling.

After a long long long time (LOTS of sleeps) the yelling bad people won against the people they were yelling at.

The yelling people didn't know what to do then. They only knew how to be angry and they couldn't find anything else or anyone else to yell at and people were starting to leave their team because all the excitement was gone and there wasn't a competitive game to play anymore.

So the bad yelling people panicked and started randomly picking other, smaller groups of people on the playground to yell about. They made up things about them and told lies.

It didn't work at first, and they tried telling lies about lots of different groups of people one after another, and eventually they started picking on some people who were JUST different enough that some of their old yelling teammates who got bored and left believed those lies and joined the yelling again. There was SO much yelling and it was so much louder that it was impossible for anyone near the yelling people to hear the truth.

And that's how we got from "abortion as an issue" to "trans people as an issue".