Kentucky bill would ban physicians from giving medically necessary care to transgender youth

[parochial boy]

It’s misleading to say “medically necessary” in this context; the headline makes it sound like they would force doctors at the ER to not save the lives of dying patients simply because they are trans. That’s not the case at all. This is just another ban on childhood medical transition. The argument that it is “medically necessary” rests on the assumption that not allowing underage medical transition would necessarily drive trans-identified youth to suicide. Perhaps a fair argument, but it’s not like not having access to these treatments would directly cause people’s bodies to stop functioning as would, say, banning diabetics from access to insulin. The bill also would not ban trans-identified youth from having health insurance, only not require providers to cover gender transition.

I don’t agree with the bill and despise Savannah Maddox. But argue against what it actually says, don’t make it sound worse than it actually is and then attack that strawman because it’s easier.

This bill is going to drive many trans kids to suicide, and will seriously harm the mental health of even more. Debating whether "medically necessary" is technically accurate doesn't change anything.

It's a completely dishonest redefintion of "medically necessary" to mean "immediately life saving at this very precise moment now". Even if most trans children didn't commit suicide because they were denied gender affirmative care, the treatment would still be medically necessary because it assuages very real suffering.

Otherwise, let's just go the whole hog and ban children from getting braces or repairing cleft lip. They don't fit the transphobic definition of "medically necessary" either.

[parochial boy]

It has been explained to you multiple times that puberty blockers are extremely low risk, and the to the anguish and potential suicide risk caused by forcing trans youth to go through the wrong puberty is massive. Why do you continue to die on this hill?

The scaremongering about puberty blockers seems to work the same as scaremongering about vaccines. "But what if it turns out they have some terrible side effects that haven't been found out yet in any of the research done so far???" while ignoring all the very documented side effects of NOT taking them when you need them.

At least most anti-vaxxers don't outright support banning vaccines, though.

Yeah, the arguments against puberty blockers always seem to boil down to one or both of "there are side effects that we just don't know about" (after 30 years, really?) or "the science is being surpressed or ignored because of those awful activists".

In both cases they are so ungrounded that they almost aren't worth engaging with. Except that they are being used to push through policy, actively harmful and inhumane policy against a group of people who have done no wrong other than find themselves as the acceptable target now that it is no longer acceptable to bash the gays of the blacks.