Transgender people under 18 face laws that bar them from accessing gender-affirming health care in 25 states — just a few years ago, not a single state had such a law.
The Supreme Court has agreed to consider a case from Tennessee in its next term that challenges that state’s gender-affirming care ban for young people.
NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin spoke with Whitman-Walker Institute Executive Director Dr. Kellan Baker about all these new laws restricting gender affirming care.
Excerpt:
It’s not just laws about medical care that have been passed, notes Kellan Baker, executive director of the Whitman Walker Institute, a LGBTQ research and advocacy group. “There are new restrictions being proposed and enacted every day around how transgender people can move through the world, not just with regard to accessing medical care, but, for example, going to school, playing on a sports team,” he says.
In Baker’s view, the state legislators passing these laws are “attacking kids to score political points and taking advantage of the fact that a lot of people might not know a transgender person,” he says. “There aren’t that many transgender people — the best estimates we have are about 0.6% of the U.S. population identifies as transgender.”
