As part of the Republican effort to demonize and isolate LGBTQ+ people (and allies), conservatives have homed in on the lives of trans youth and adults. As we approach midterm elections, for example, we’ve watched Republicans push anti-trans bills to bar trans girls and women from participating in girls’ sports teams and keep trans folks from accessing the appropriate bathrooms and locker rooms. We’ve seen conservatives stir outrage over books by and about LGBTQ+ people, including trying to get such texts pulled from public libraries and classroom shelves. We’ve also seen an ongoing effort to criminalize access to safe, age-appropriate, gender-affirming health care for trans people of all ages.
Republicans have a few refrains they use when it comes to trans health care. You’ll see transphobes describe gender-affirming care as “mutilation,” “abuse,” and “irreversible.” You’ll see treatments described as “experiments.” You’ll see a lot of accusations that kids are just walking into a doctor’s office and getting these care treatments off the cuff. In reality, gender-affirming care is backed by all major medical associations here in the United States, including for young people. Gender-affirming care, research has shown us, is lifesaving care. But Republicans insist people will come to regret it and be stuck with decisions they can’t reverse.
In reality, as new research from the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands published in The Lancet on Thursday, Oct. 20, shows us, a sweeping majority of people who receive gender-affirming care as youth continue that treatment as adults.
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The study includes more than 700 people who have received puberty blockers and hormonal therapy as adolescents. The study followed these participants to see if they continued gender-affirming care as adults. Guess how many did?
According to this data, a smooth 98% continued the gender-affirming care they received as youth. Yes, you read that correctly: 98%. The study included 500 people who were assigned female at birth and 220 people who were assigned male at birth. Study participants were between 14 and 17 when they began receiving gender-affirming care. During study follow-ups, participants ranged between 17 and 25 years old.
Dr. Marianne van der Loos, a physician at Amsterdam UMC who spoke to The Daily Beast in an interview, said the main takeaway of the study is that the majority of people who went through a “thorough diagnostic evaluation” before starting gender-affirming care went on to continue said care as an adult.
“This is reassuring regarding the recent increased public concern about regret of transition,” she added to the outlet.
And for the 2% of people who stopped these treatments? The study doesn’t actually clarify why these folks stopped—it could be because of regret or because they no longer identify as trans. It could also be because of the cost of such treatments, access to health care in general, societal or family pressure, and so on. All of these possibilities are valid and fair.
In the big picture, we know Republicans have already made strides in barring trans folks from accessing safe, affordable gender-affirming health care. We’ve seen supportive families in Texas be investigated by state agencies on child abuse allegations simply for providing their trans youth with gender-affirming care. We’ve seen at least one Republican governor sign anti-trans health care bills into law, effectively barring trans youth from receiving lifesaving care. We’ve seen anti-queer extremists push a federal version of Florida’s infamous Don’t Say Gay bill, working hard to discriminate against the queer community as a whole.
It’s all part of a plan to force progressives and moderates to meet hate in the middle—if suddenly the entire LGBTQ+ community is at risk, it becomes a little more reasonable to throw one group under the bus, right? Wrong. That’s what Republicans want us to get used to, but as long as we stay engaged and get voters to the polls, this reality never has to happen.
How should we be reading the 2022 polls, in light of shifting margins and past misses? In this week’s episode of The Downballot Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen joins us to explain how his firm weights polls to reflect the likely electorate; why Democratic leads in most surveys this year should be treated as smaller than they appear because undecided voters lean heavily anti-Biden; and the surprisingly potent impact abortion has had on moving the needle with voters despite our deep polarization.