As Nebraska’s new law restricting gender-affirming care for minors goes into effect this weekend, families with transgender children and the doctors who treat them are steeling themselves for change. But exactly what and how much change is anyone’s guess.

A key aspect of the law is a set of treatment guidelines that has yet to be created. Affected families, doctors and even lawmakers say they have largely gotten no response from health officials on when they can expect the new rules, which should lay out how and when transgender minors can be treated with puberty blockers and hormones.

Many of them fear Republican officials and their appointees in charge of administering the rules are slow-walking the regulations as a way to block treatment for new transgender patients under 19, the age of adulthood under Nebraska law.

  • 3L54@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    ”Only those minors who have shown “a long-lasting and intense pattern of gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria” would be allowed to start puberty blocking or hormone treatment, and only under a set of guidelines to be drafted by the state’s newly appointed chief medical officer, Dr. Timothy Tesmer.”

    Sounds fairly reasonable to me. We are not the smartest as teens nor do we have the capacity to make life lasting decisions. In my opinion minors should be treated as minors.

    • worldwidewave@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Legislating how people use their bodies is wholly wrong. It is not the place of any government to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body, especially when I’m heeding the medical advice of a doctor.

      It is just as wrong to tell me I have to, or can’t, get pregnant. Those decisions belong to me and me alone, and that goes for the other 8 billion people in this world as well. Humans have bodily autonomy.

      You should be vociferously defending that right for yourself.

        • worldwidewave@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Like the other guy said. If a doctor said my child was far more likely to commit suicide without a tattoo, and they could live their fullest and truest lives as themselves tatted up, you bet your ass I’d take that kid to get a tattoo.

          Am I the villain here?

          • DadWagonDriver@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            I’m just going off your first sentence: “Legislating how people use their bodies is wholly wrong.”

            Now you’re talking about medical conditions, which means it’s not wholly wrong, it’s conditionally wrong.

            • worldwidewave@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Apologies for being ambiguous in the first sentence. You can read the subsequent ones for clarity on my position.

    • Casey_Masterpiece@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      In this case not making a choice is still a life changing decision. One benefit of puberty blockers I always thought is that allows you to make a decision about it when you’re more mature. It’s the closest thing to not making a life changing decision.

    • Maeve@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      If we can expect children to birth children, we can expect them to know who they are.

      • bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Yes? Women can start menstruation very young and hormonal birth control helps with regularity and pain.

        There’s massive quality of life benefits outside being a contraceptive.

      • 3L54@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Everybody should have a right for birth control and abortion without any age limits. I dont really see how thats related to permanently life altering changes being made underaged.