Healthcare Is NOT Child Abuse
Texas begins investigating parents of trans kids
For anyone who thought that right-wingers would be satisfied with ending abortion rights, they got their answer Wednesday.
Just months after it enacted one of the nation’s most draconian bans on reproductive freedom, the state of Texas is now also leading the way in persecuting its transgender youth…and their parents.
Republican Gov Greg Abbott has officially directed Texas state Family and Protective Services to begin investigating all trans children in Texas and prosecuting their parents as child abusers.
He has also instructed all teachers, doctors, and caregivers to begin reporting any trans students they see.
This is criminalizing a class of Americans simply for who they are…and it’s deeply unAmerican.
Let’s be very clear: there is nothing “abusive” in providing gender-affirming care for transgender people of all ages.
That care is well-understood and is provided by trained and licensed health professionals.
Such as the wonderful professionals at the medical center where I have received my gender transition care for years now, Chase-Brexton, located in the Baltimore, Md., region.
Indeed, Chase-Brexton particularly offers its Gender JOY program for pediatric gender-affirming care which provides expert health services for transgender and gender-diverse children and adolescents, and their families.
This includes:
Pediatric care
Gynecological care
Puberty blockers
Cross sex hormones
Fertility preservation counseling
Behavioral health services
Social work and outreach services
There is nothing dangerous, backroom or “dirty" about this care.
Indeed, my providers at Chase-Brexton have been some of the most skilled and compassionate I have ever had the privilege of encountering.
Being trans
And there is nothing wrong, shameful in being transgender — and likewise there is nothing wrong, criminal, or certainly “abusive” — in gender transition.
I knew that I was different when I was just three or four years old.
Furthermore, I ended up online on my father’s computer as a teenager back in the 1980s, in chat rooms for transsexuals — the word “transgender” had yet to come into existence — and, at last, I had my final “ah, ha" moment: That’s what and who I was.
It would be another 30 years, however, before I ultimately transitioned.
But that was only because I had never been able to find a clear path forward in those intervening years.
But those were years spent painfully shy — and really a stranger in my own life — simply because I couldn’t be who I knew myself to be.
No one — especially children — should have to endure that sort of suffering, especially just to satisfy someone’s far-right political agenda.
Today — my own transition largely complete — I live an extremely happy and fulfilling life as a trans woman in the suburbs of the Washington DC region.
If I have any regrets about my transition, it’s only that the society in which I was living didn’t offer me clear “off-ramps” to identify — and treat — my gender dysphoria sooner.
Don’t believe me?
Okay, then listen to Kai Shappley, a trans girl from Texas who last year testified against a state ban on trans care.
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