Texas isn’t the only state denying essential medical care to trans youths. Here’s what’s going on.

Texas isn’t the only state denying essential medical care to trans youths. Here’s what’s going on.

Elizabeth Sharrow, Isaac Sederbaum — Read time: 2 minutes

Conservatives are increasingly imposing government control over sexuality and gender

Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EST

Mayor Steve Adler (D) speaks at an event at City Hall where he declared Austin a safe and inclusive city for transgender families on March 9, 2022. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman/AP)

Conservatives are increasingly making laws and policies targeting trans children

The “save our children” rhetoric advanced in Texas has long been central to anti-LGBTQ+ conservatism. Anti-gay activists such as Anita Bryant used such language in the 1970s to demonize lesbians and gays and prevent the passage of anti-discrimination ordinances. Ultraconservative groups today use similar framings to argue that acknowledging transgender people is an “assault on the sexes.” The Republican Party platform still explicitly opposes nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, and Republicans are behind nearly every recent anti-trans bill.

Lack of media coverage undermines trans dignity

Such coverage fosters misunderstanding and worse. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) recently promoted violence against trans people, which is already endemic; trans people are four times as likely to be violently attacked than cisgender people. The highest-profile public information about trans life is being generated by those who threaten it.

Banning medical care policies based on gendered ideologies

Texas reveals how state legislatures are increasingly politicizing medical decisions in ways that institute government control over sexuality and gender. Texas also enforces one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the nation, a law that has been under review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Both antiabortion and anti-trans policies that seek to deny access to medical care exert state-authorized control over gender and sexual autonomy. The abortion law deputizes average citizens with enforcement, enabling them to sue any abortion provider or fellow citizen who aides a person seeking abortion-related medical care. (Thirty-one similar “copycat” laws are under consideration nationwide.)

The anti-trans directive to DFPS takes this vigilante reporting structure further, mandating reporting for doctors, educators and anyone who works with youths receiving transition-related health care. This threatens families with gender-diverse children, many of whom already fear reprisal from hostile community members and child protective services.

The Texas policy, if enforced, will expand such practices that punish gender-diverse families by separating trans kids from loving parents, and isolating them from doctors, therapists and teachers who want to support them.

High stakes for trans youths

The Texas Department of Health and Human Services has removed resources for LGBTQ+ youths from its suicide prevention website. And Texas Children’s Hospital — the largest pediatric hospital in the nation — announced Friday that it will no longer provide gender-affirming treatments in light of the policy directive. Full implementation of the Texas policy would further undermine this essential medical care by arbitrarily defining it as child abuse and requiring professionals who deal with children to separate them from those healthy supports — thus doing the opposite of what the standard of care requires.

Elizabeth Sharrow (@e_sharrow) is an associate professor in the University of Massachusetts School of Public Policy and the Department of History.