Carrie Jackson and her family of three fondly remember their home in Denton, Texas. They had moved to the Dallas suburb from the tiny town of Malakoff, Texas, back in 2016. Jackson landed a job she liked as a lead counselor for the Aubrey Independent School District. Carrie said her 17-year-old high school junior, Cass, who is transgender, was thriving. . . . . Cass was making great grades, working a job, driving a car and starting to think about college, Carrie said.
On the night of Feb. 22. Carrie was sitting in bed, scrolling through her Facebook feed, and spotted a news article posted by another mother. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had issued a directive requiring the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate all parents with medically transitioning kids, enclosing an opinion from fellow Republican, Attorney General Ken Paxton, to back it up. These parents could be brought up on charges of child abuse — and people who worked with trans kids could be, too, if they didn’t report such families to state authorities.
Just weeks later, the Jacksons were en route to Cumberland, a small city near the Allegheny mountains in western Maryland, where Cass’ older sibling lived. Cass’ sibling, Bug, is also transgender and would provide a new home for Cass, their mother and their other sister. Unemployed and without a plan, the family felt their only option was to flee a state they had never intended to leave. They were leaving their home.
The Jacksons are not the only family that left Texas since Abbott’s directive — they’re part of a larger exodus of families with trans children from states that have implemented laws and policies clamping down on their access to health care, according to POLITICO interviews with more than a dozen transgender teens and adults and their family members.
The fight over access to gender-affirming medical care for trans youths — like the fight over abortion rights and other issues at the intersection of health, politics, gender, culture and race — is impacting where Americans want to live, work and raise families. And it’s grown particularly acute over the past year, as conservative governors and legislators have restricted access to medical care for gender dysphoria, a condition that stems from one’s lived experience of gender being different from the sex assigned at birth.
“The impact [on trans people] is very significant,” said Assistant U.S. Secretary for Health Rachel Levine in an interview, referring to the state moves to restrict care.
For the Jacksons, who let a reporter and photographer spend days with them in Maryland sharing their story of leaving Texas, the choice quickly became urgent. After Abbott’s announcement, Cass’ mental health suffered, Carrie said. The directive required professionals who work with children — teachers, school nurses, counselors — to report the parents of children like Cass to the Department of Family and Protective Services or face possible criminal charges.
Cass worried about their mother’s career in school counseling and of the risk to their whole family if they were reported to the Department of Family and Protective Services.
Almost 2 percent of high schoolers in the U.S. identify as trans, and they report starkly higher rates of depression, suicidal thoughts and other mental health issues compared to peers who identify as cisgender (meaning their gender identity corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth, according to the National Institute of Health), Meanwhile, over 5 percent of adults under 30 and about 1.6 percent of all adults identify as transgender or nonbinary in the U.S., according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.
Over the last few years, multiple GOP-controlled state legislatures have advanced bills that would strip access for children and teens to undergo a gender transition. These pieces of legislation have largely been framed by their sponsors as efforts to protect children from “groomers,” pedophiles and doctors intent on doing irreversible harm to their bodies. Though the bills are focused on minors, they have also created fear and uncertainty among trans adults about whether their care, too, could soon be threatened . . . .
Arkansas, Arizona and Alabama have passed laws limiting or outright banning gender-affirming care for minors, while states including Texas and Florida are using executive actions to pursue similar goals. The Arkansas, Texas and Alabama measures have been blocked or partly blocked in court while legal battles continue. Advocates have also vowed to challenge Arizona’s less sweeping law.
Some states also limit — or in some cases exclude — Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care, including for adults, a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
At least 15 other state legislatures are considering proposals for similar restrictions. At the federal level, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has introduced the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” which would ban federal funding for health plans that cover gender-affirming treatment, prohibit U.S. academia from training doctors in how to provide such care and make it a felony for a doctor to give such care to a minor. It has 49 co-sponsors. It has not yet been heard in the House, but that could change as Republicans take control in that chamber next year.
In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — frequently mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2024 — has spoken out against gender-affirming care for minors and the governor’s state-appointed Medical Board just a few days before the November elections banned most gender-affirming care for minors. Doctors could lose their licenses if they violate the new policy. The DeSantis administration has also barred Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care for adults.
DeSantis also led the fight for Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education Bill” — or the “Don’t Say Gay” law, as opponents have dubbed it — which prohibits classroom discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation in grades K-3, and seeks to ban such lessons for other grades as well.
[T]he American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians, among many others — have taken the position that gender-affirming care is a medical necessity.
Left untreated, studies have shown, individuals with gender dysphoria face a higher risk of self-harm and suicidal thoughts. For adults, studies have found medical interventions to treat gender dysphoria — including hormone replacement therapies and surgeries — substantially reduce the likelihood of those negative mental health outcomes.
These treatments may be more effective earlier on in life, before puberty locks somebody into having physical features that don’t align with their gender identity. In January, a Stanford University study based on the largest-ever survey of U.S. transgender adults found that those who received hormonal treatment in childhood are less likely to experience major health disorders or have problems with substance abuse.
“Nothing is more ominous than allowing politicians and attorneys to render medical judgments on our nation’s children,” Brown added. “The greatest myth perpetrated by these lawmakers is that there are high numbers who regret and that young people are incapable of making permanent decisions about their gender identity, neither of which are supported by any documented evidence.”
Safer also said that the claim that children entering puberty would face irreversible changes is incorrect. Trans children entering puberty may opt for medications to pause their hormonal development, but if they later choose to stop taking the drug, puberty will resume its course.
Nor is the assertion by some politicians that many trans teens are receiving surgery correct. There has been a marginal increase in “top” surgery — meaning breast tissue removal — among older trans boys, but it is still a rare occurrence. Any kind of genital surgery is highly unusual for anyone under 18.
Some activists and campaign strategists — including one of Abbott’s — have acknowledged they believe this push could be good politics, rallying a conservative base who believe that trans lives don’t comport with their values.
One transgender woman in her thirties packed her bags and left Florida for Washington state in mid-October. She said in an interview that she began looking at options to sell the house she purchased four years ago after DeSantis began ramping up restrictions on her care.
“I’ve been living in Florida, grew up here, went to school here, started a company here, bought a house and was trying to have a family,” said the woman, who was granted anonymity out of fear of harassment. “Now that’s just all out the window because of what’s happening.”
Opponents of trans children receiving hormone medications claim there is a risk that kids will regret changing their bodies later in life, and say they will grow out of identifying as trans. Studies have shown the contrary — most teenagers who receive this care continue into adulthood with positive results.
As is the norm with Christofascists - and far to may in the GOP base - facts and knowledge mean nothing. It's all about inflicting their Dark Age beliefs on all of society and punishing those who do not conform.
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