For Mother’s Day, I want lawmakers to stop blocking care for trans children

All mothers want the best for their children, especially when it comes to getting the health care they need. But right now, mothers in nearly half of our states are suffering because their children are being denied needed medical care.

Twenty-four states have passed legislation that limits access to gender-affirming health care for young people. And 22 states criminalize health care professionals who administer this standard medically necessary treatment for trans youth.

I am the mother of a transgender daughter. I know how critical the care of gender affirmation was, and is, to its very existence.

All major medical and pediatric associations recognize that gender-affirming treatments, such as puberty blockers, are the standard of care treatment for minors. Less than 1 percent of minors who take puberty blockers change their minds, but for that 1 percent, the effects are 100 percent reversible. In this case, the doctor helps them stop the blockers and puberty resumes.

What is not reversible is puberty itself.

If a child is born transgender, as my son was, allowing male puberty would force him to grow facial hair and develop an Adam’s apple, as well as a deep voice. Likewise, a transgender boy would be forced to develop breasts and menstruate.

This causes such deep trauma that children forced into this dystopian reality are at greater risk of suicidal ideation. Conversely, receiving gender-affirming care increases well-being and other critical outcomes in trans youth.

Imagine it’s your body that lawmakers were arguing about. What right would he have to force you to be a woman if you are now a man, or vice versa?

That seems to be what far-right extremists want. A shocking lack of information dictates their policies. Instead, they force a fundamentalist ideology that contradicts science and medicine on children and their families.

The science on this is clear: it’s the brain that determines gender, not the reproductive organs. Gender dysphoria happens in people who are born with brains and reproductive systems that don’t align.

My daughter was born with reproductive organs that we associate with the male sex, but with a brain that was not influenced by male hormones. Ever since he could speak, he had been clear and unwavering that she was a girl. When she turned 13, a team of doctors prescribed male puberty blockers to treat her gender dysphoria and save her from the trauma of experiencing the wrong puberty.

My daughter is now a joyful, beautiful, and bright 23-year-old trans woman, making the world a better place for young trans people through her activism and her very existence. This is the best Mother’s Day gift I could have received.

Some people, contrary to fact and scientific evidence, insist that the Earth is flat. Likewise, some people still insist that gender is binary and determined by reproductive organs. In some ways, these people are more dangerous than the old flat earthers, because they are making deadly policies to deny our children needed medical care.

Every mother, father or caregiver wants their children to be happy and free to be themselves, without the interference and control of ignorant ideologues dictating whether or not they are allowed to receive life-saving medical care.

Together, we must work to defeat the cruel and misguided policies that deny this freedom to children and their families. We will not tolerate another Mother’s Day that will negate the health and well-being of our children.

Karen Dolan is a fellow at the Institute of Political Studies.

The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own.