So by all accounts, medical professionals and researchers have come to the conclusion that transgender people are just, you know, people. Yet, Republican lawmakers are driven by a bizarre desire to destroy everything they don’t understand, even if that means targeting children.
Last month, ya boy wrote about how Republican legislators in southern states had drafted numerous bills targeting transgender youth. Now, NBC News reports that over 200 medical professionals have signed an open letter condemning the legislation. Some of the laws would result in doctors losing their licenses or possibly even facing jail time for providing hormonal medication and transition-related surgery.
The letter states: “These bills run counter to the growing consensus in the medical community that improving access to gender-affirming care is a central means of improving health outcomes for transgender people.” It was signed by a wide swath of medical professionals, from mental health counselors and surgeons to pharmacists and dentists.
Republican lawmakers have been adamant that these bills were made to “protect” the children. They are being put in place to prevent children from making decisions about their body at too young of an age. The problem is, this completely ignores science. Recent studies have shown that trans youth are just as certain of their gender identity as their cis-gender counterparts. Not only that but a study published in Pediatrics shows that access to puberty blockers reduces suicide risk in trans youth. These laws are not meant to protect children, they’re meant to hurt them.
There is some glimmer of hope, though. In Florida, a bill that would have made it a felony for doctors to provide hormone medication or to perform transitional surgery effectively died last Monday. This was after multiple trans youth and their families came forward and told their stories at the hearings. The hope is that Republican lawmakers will see firsthand the damage these laws will inflict and drop them. I, for one, certainly hope that’s the case.