For a year and a half, GOP lawmakers have been stealthily adding amendements to government appropriations bills, which are key to funding major government departments, to ban any federal money being used for gender transition procedures. This will dramatically curtail trans people’s access to medical care — just like the Hyde Amendment restricted abortion access, write Io Dodds and Eric Garcia.
Extremely rare side effects aside, what about all the kids whose lives you destroy by _not _ intervening? Do you know how many confused cis kids go on blockers, decide they want to stop and go on and live a cis life? It literally almost never happens.
Of the children accessing trans healthcare available to minors, the overwhelming majority are trans kids who do not detransition or regret anything they do to transition. The kid you are “protecting” is that “confused cis kid” who is vastly outnumbered by genuinely trans children who will become transgender adults. By withholding blockers (at the minimum), you are sacrificing the well being of the overwhelming users of blockers, genuinely trans children, for the sake of the wellbeing of an almost non existent subgroup of confused cis kids.
How many trans kids lives are worth sacrificing so that one cis kid might not accidentally do something totally reversible that might increase their risk of cancer the same amount as eating bacon?
When you put it all together like that and the outcome is still a desire to prevent access, one has to ask: maybe the point is to make the trans kids suffer? Maybe the point is to make it harder for them to blend in with cis people? Maybe the point is to not treat their illness in hopes they give up and conform or kill themselves?