In the wake of the new laws targeting transgender healthcare and bathroom use, I want to share my thoughts as a voter and as a human being.
According to the scholarly article Suicide-Related Outcomes Following Gender-Affirming Treatment: A Review, which is available for your review on PubMed, an examination of 23 studies on transgender individuals showed that the reciept of gender-affirming care sharply decreased suicidal thoughts and behavior in transgender individuals.
For adults, this can mean the decision to take hormones or undergo surgery.
For children, this can sometimes mean the use of puberty blockers that serve to pause puberty until the child is old enough to make a decision on whether they wish to move forward with treatment or not. Puberty blockers are reversible, and have been used on children who experience early puberty since the 1980s. That’s over forty years.
It is my opinion that a child’s medical care should be decided by their parents and their doctors, NOT by the government.
It is also my opinion that adults should have the right to choose their own medical care, as well as any cosmetic procedures. If the state cannot determine what medication a person takes for their diabetes, whether they get a nose job, or whether they need therapy to be allowed a tattoo, then they should not have a place in deciding how transgender individuals are cared for in a medical setting.
Politicians are not doctors.
Doctors don’t just make up medicine as they go. Medications have to undergo intensive clinical trials before being prescribed. If you’re genuinely concerned for the safety of transgender people, please trust in the doctors and scientists who spend years on these studies.
If you simply disagree with our choices, that’s perfectly fine, but it does not give the government the right to make those choices for us.
In a study of 155 transgender people, 30% attempted suicide pre-transition. None made any attempts after transition. That’s a small study, but it’s only one of the 23 mentioned in that article.
While studies must continue, this cannot happen if the state intends to block us from accessing care entirely.
I look around at my transgender loved ones. Many would not have survived if not for gender-affirming care. Five, ten, fifteen years later, I know people who are happier than they have ever been. There exist elders in our community who have recieved HRT (hormone replacement therapy) for gender dysphoria since the seventies.
If you care about us, let us live freely.
If you are among those who hate us, know that history will remember skyrocketing suicide rates as genocide. So, the next time a decision about transgender rights passes across your desk, please remember us.
We will be voting.
