BY: MARY “MAX” WILSON
Opinions Editor
Last year I wrote about the proposed bills in the Missouri legislature that would leave transgender children and teens without access to hormone therapy or puberty blockers. The bill would make it so doctors who prescribed the therapies would lose their license; parents who sought out this care for their children could be reported to the Children’s Division.
The bills didn’t pass last year.
There have been a flurry of anti-trans bills from multiple states, including our very own Missouri. One bill would make it so transgender kids who are medically transitioning couldn’t play on their pub- lic school sports’ team that aligns with their gender identity.
Others mimic last year’s bills, aiming to ban hormone therapy or puberty blockers for transgender children under 18 in the state of Missouri.
A similar bill has passed in Arkansas. Governor Asa Hutchinson, a republican, vetoed the bill, but the legislators overrode his veto.
I can cite statistics or rattle off facts all day: the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recom- mended in a formal statement “support and care of transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents.” The same statement claims that “adolescents and adults who identify as transgender have high rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self- harm and suicide.” Multiple studies have shown the same thing: support and affirming care of transgender and gender diverse children saves lives.
In hearings, republican legislators say that they don’t want young kids to be pressured into hormone therapy.
As someone who has watched a family member go through the process to receive hormone therapy, I can tell you firsthand: absolutely no one is pressuring kids. Months of therapy with a specialist, letters, appointments, criteria—it is a difficult process, but it is a life saving one.
For kids who haven’t yet gone through puberty, transitioning might include a new haircut and different clothes and going by a different name. Young kids aren’t getting these medications. As puberty approaches, some kids take puberty blockers, to stop them from going through the puberty of the gender they don’t identify with. It’s like a “pause” button. Once puberty blockers are stopped, puberty will continue on as normal, or, if the child, parents and doctors agree, hormone therapy will begin. The therapy is medically supervised and closely monitored by medical professionals and experts in their field.
These are, frankly, non-issues. No one is pressuring kids to be transgender or forcing hormone therapy on them. Student athletes just want to play their sport—I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that absolutely no one is pretending to be trans to play on the other team and have an advantage over the other players.
The Republican party promotes these bills to distract from real issues: gun violence, voter disenfranchisement, access to healthcare, climate change. These are things that actually matter. Instead of working to find solutions, however, the Republican party focuses on topics that will solidify their base and spark outrage over things that are just fine the way they are.
