General Discussion

This is the "Week 40 Abortion" of the trans rights national dialogue.

Very few doctors will even sign off on hormone treatments for minors.

With minors, we're talking about puberty blockers which delay puberty until the child is old enough to make up their own mind about whether they want to transition permanently or not. That can mean that difference between whether they need expensive surgery (which always carries risks) later in life. If you are FTM and take puberty blockers as a teen, you may not need top surgery as an adult. Top surgery costs $7,000-$10,000 and leave permanent scars on your chest.

If you are MTF and take puberty blockers, your voice won't change (saving you from having to do vocal chord shaving) and you may not need to spend thousands of dollars on laser hair removal.

There are no documented permanent health impacts of taking puberty blockers. If you stop taking them, you go through puberty the same as you would have otherwise.

The only reason to block kids' access to them is because you think trans people are gross or don't actually exist. And that's not your call to make for other people and their kids.

85% of trans people have considered self-harming. 45% have been seriously suicidal. Gender affirming surgery is life saving *health care* to which trans people deserve equal access the same as cis people.

If Medicaid or the army or whoever pays for gastric bypass surgery, they can pay for gender affirming care.

I think surgery for prisoners needs to be addressed on a case by case basis that takes into account the individual and their sentence in the context of a *health care* decision where we take gender dysphoria seriously - not as cosmetic surgery. If the state has decided to imprison someone for life, it has assumed a duty of care for that person, and that includes reasonable access to health care.