Puberty Blockers

 

No One Had a Problem With Puberty Blockers When Only CIS Kids Took Them

BY HANNAH SMOTHERS
5/28/2021

Lawmakers hell-bent on taking puberty blockers away from trans kids are ignoring all the research that says they're safe for everyone.

Right now, 13 (mostly GOP-run) states have at least one active bill that targets health care for transgender children, and one state (Arkansas) already passed such a law, becoming the first state in the country to come after vital pediatric trans health care. The bills all function differently: Some introduce punitive measures for physicians who provide gender-affirming care while others (like an active bill in Texas) designate gender-affirming care as child abuse.

“It’s certainly the most aggressive attack I’ve seen,” Chase Strangio, deputy director for Trans Justice at the ACLU, previously told VICE. He’s right; the dozens of bills circulating at the state level represent the most widespread attack on the rights of trans and non binary children that the United States has yet to see. 

While they may operate slightly differently, as VICE reported, the bills employ the common GOP tactic of “copy-and-paste” legislation. Embedded within each bill is an argument that puberty blockers, or hormones that temporarily suppress puberty, are inherently dangerous and suffer from a lack of long-term, longitudinal data. But as pediatric endocrinologists told VICE, nothing could be further from the truth. Puberty blockers have long been used to treat precocious puberty (the medical term for early puberty) in cisgender children—safely, and without any controversy. 

Jason Klein, a pediatric endocrinologist and Assistant Director of the Transgender Youth Health Program at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone:

Puberty blockers have been used for decades in cisgender kids who either are going through puberty too early, or, in some instances, kids who are going through puberty very quickly,”Their use has been FDA approved, well-studied, well-documented, and well-tolerated for a long time now. And it’s the exact same medication that we use in trans or non-binary children to basically put a pause on pubertal development. Exactly the same medications, at exactly the same doses. 

They're safe for everyone.To me, the side effects of these medications are well-documented and the medications are safe. This legislation is out there in order to try to suppress a population that is already particularly vulnerable from obtaining medical care. And that’s dangerous.

To be clear, the bills as written leave exceptions specifically for cis kids. In every case, the laws target puberty blockers only when used as trans care. Physicians could continue providing the medication to cis kids who start puberty too early, but could face punishment or risk child abuse charges if they provide the exact same medication for a kid who’s trans or non-binary. (Oddly enough, the bills almost never use the words “transgender” or “non-binary,” instead referring to “gender transitioning or gender reassignment.”)

Read More at Vice News  

 

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