With a federal judge having struck down the Arkansas ban on administering gender-affirming care to trans youth — the first such law in what would become an avalanche — the first domino has fallen in what will ideally be the end of these bans.
These bans are rooted in a set of false pretexts, ones that have been seeded and fomented by critics in bad faith: that gender-affirming care for young trans people is very easily obtainable, experimental, always has permanent consequences and is often regretted.
In truth, medical interventions from surgeries to hormone therapies have been practiced and studied for decades, getting them often requires multiple steps and a good deal of persistence, treatments like puberty blockers are physically reversible and the rate of regret for receiving this care is vanishingly small, about 1% on average.
Every relevant major medical association, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association and World Health Organization, are aligned in recognizing the appropriateness and need for this type of care. Are there conversations to be had about the correct ages, intensities and progression of these treatments? Of course there are, just like there are with all medical issues.
Contrary to what the anti-trans crowd contends, proponents are all for letting the scientific method and the normal medical deliberations take place, and the consensus at this stage is that these treatments do far more good than harm. These conversations will keep playing out within the scientific community, and perhaps recommendations will evolve. What is not appropriate, and has no basis in the actual scientific process, are categorical bans on gender-affirming care that are clearly purely ideological, especially given that, as the Arkansas lawsuit pointed out, they often exempted the same type of care if applied to nontransgender youth.
It’s unfortunate that this relatively niche issue has become such a concerted focus of state legislatures around the country, instead of policies that actually help constituents. Let’s hope this ruling sets the stage for these restrictions to be a mere flash in the pan.
