In a letter sent to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) in February, Texas Governor Gregory Abbott concerningly ordered the agency to investigate reports of gender-confirming care for children as abuse following a nonbinding legal opinion released by the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton. Not only does the directive target individual families, but it also aims to wrongly paint licensed doctors, nurses, and even teachers as complicit for their supposed failure to report child abuse. While orders and legislation aimed to deprive necessary medical care and constitutional rights are not new for the Lone Star State, the lawless interpretation aimed to harm children and tear families apart is unacceptable.
To falsely characterize gender-confirming care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy as malicious is molded by the miasma of hatred, making the narrative peddled by Abbott and Paxton dangerously pervasive. It is unsurprising when such narratives incite further discrimination on the basis of one’s identity, continuing to go against the opinions of leading medical groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Abbott’s attempts to demonize the health care of transgender youth completely ignores the empirical data that suggest gender-affirming care actively improves the mental health of youth both short and long term.
A 2022 article study published by Diana Tordoff, who has a Masters of Public Health degree, found that within a cohort of 104 individuals, aged 13 to 20, odds of moderate or severe depression were lowered by 60 percent, and suicidal tendencies were lowered by 73 percent when the transgender youth were allowed to seek the gender-confirming care they needed.
Similarly, a 2021 secondary analysis of the 2015 United States Transgender Survey published by Anthony Almazan, a student at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, correlated gender-affirming care to lower odds of psychological stress, depression, and suicidal ideation when compared to individuals without a history of gender-affirming care or surgery. The survey, conducted across all 50 states, is the largest current existing data set, having surveyed a total of 27,715 transgender individuals.
But this information is far from new.
In a systematic literature review conducted by the online research portal at Cornell University, the What We Know Project assessed all peer-reviewed articles published in English between 1991 and June 2017, finding that 51 of the 55 studies correlated gender transitioning to the overall well-being of an individual being improved. While the remaining four articles reported mixed or null findings, none of the studies suggested gender transitioning causes overall harm.
Just like when Texas tried to force minors to compete in sports based on their assigned gender at birth through anti-transgender legislation that could subject students to further harassment and discrimination during a fragile time of one’s life, transgender youth continue to face barrier after barrier that withhold the treatments they deserve to have.
As President Joe Biden puts it in his State of the Union Address, “Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the governor’s actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points. These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop.”
Ultimately, it boils down to understanding and empathy, because the dire need for acceptance is necessary to create a more progressive state. The trans youth living in a climate of state-enabled fear deserve the health care all Americans have a right to, and hateful opinions stuck in the past should not be halting their lifelines.
