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Fight or Flight: Transgender Care Bans Leave Families and Doctors Scrambling [1]
['Ernesto Londoño', 'Azeen Ghorayshi', 'Jamie Kelter Davis', 'More About Ernesto Londoño', 'More About Azeen Ghorayshi']
Date: 2023-07-06
Fight or Flight: Transgender Care Bans Leave Families and Doctors Scrambling
Laws in 20 states have left the fate of clinics in doubt and families with transgender children searching for medical care across state lines.
July 6, 2023
David and Wendy Batchelder hate the thought of putting their spacious house in West Des Moines, Iowa, on the market, disrupting the routines of their six children or giving up the Lutheran church that they have attended for roughly a decade.
But two new laws have left them debating whether to leave Iowa.
A ban on a medication that pauses puberty taken by their transgender son, Brecker, was signed into law by the state’s governor in March. The same month, teachers informed Brecker, 12, that he could no longer use the male restrooms and locker room at his middle school after another law was approved in the Republican-led Statehouse.
“It’s like trying to cross a bridge but the boards just fall out,” said Brecker, who recently finished seventh grade and began receiving puberty blockers in December, a year after coming out as transgender. “So you’re hanging on those two ropes, inching yourself across, not knowing whether the ropes are going to snap or break.”
In 20 states, bans or restrictions on transition-related medical care for transgender youths are upending the lives of families and medical providers.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/us/transgender-health-care-bans.html
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