Trans Adults Are the Next Target in the GOP's War on Gender-Affirming Health Care

Trans Adults Are the Next Target in the GOP’s War on Gender-Affirming Health Care
Last year, 37 medical care bans included regulations on transition treatments for adults. This year, there are already 41 such bills.

BY NICO LANG
February 16, 2024

A year after a wave of anti-trans medical care bans swept the country, Republican lawmakers are already upping the ante in 2024 by targeting trans adults’ access to healthcare.

Just days into the new year, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) attempted to restrict adults’ access to gender-affirming care by issuing an executive order that would have prohibited most primary care providers from providing gender-affirming care to trans people, no matter their age. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio termed it a “de facto ban” on all forms of transition care due to the “cumbersome requirements” it attempted to place on Ohioans seeking transition-related care. (The order also bans transition surgery for minors, something that occurs extremely rarely anyway).

“I don’t know anyone who’s trans right now and is really OK,” Dara Adkinson, the board president of TransOhio, told Them shortly after the order was issued. “So many people are just confused. They feel scared, and they feel stressed. Parents of trans kids ask us: ‘Do I need to move? Will more bad bills be passed next year?’ Truthfully, anything feels on the table at this point. It very much feels like a wall was broken, in the worst kind of way.”

The regulations for trans adults were eventually scrapped following blowback (almost 7,000 pages of emails were sent to the Ohio Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services during the open comment period for the order). But other state legislatures across the country are picking up where Ohio left off. As of a recent count from Trans Legislation Tracker, over a third of the 120 trans medical care bans already proposed in 2024 include provisions restricting trans adults’ access to care: 41 in total.

According to a representative from the ongoing data project, lawmakers in 13 states have proposed restrictions on adult health care this year, including Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming. The suggested minimum ages for care vary by state. For instance, a bill introduced in Kansas would outlaw gender-affirming care for individuals under the age of 21, and legislation in Oklahoma would have originally extended their prohibition until 26, although the Republican state senator who introduced the bill lowered the age to 18 after backlash from LGBTQ+ advocates.
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