Transgender youth in Florida will lose the ability to start gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy once a pending ban takes effect.
The Board of Medicine voted in November to forbid doctors to prescribe gender-affirming care or perform surgeries on new transgender patients until they are 18. Patients who are already receiving the treatments will be allowed to continue.
On February 10th, at a public hearing, the Board of Osteopathic Medicine removed its research exception, meaning that even prescribing the treatments in the context of a clinical trial will not be allowed. Now the Board of Medicine and the Board of Osteopathic Medicine will operate under the same rule.
The boards are defying the recommendations of former Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees, major medical bodies, and Florida voters. The policy of the American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, is to take “a ‘gender-affirming,’ nonjudgmental approach that helps children feel safe in a society that too often marginalizes or stigmatizes those seen as different.”
A majority of Florida voters believe that transgender minors should have access to gender-affirming care if their doctors and/or parents support it.
At least one organization – the Transgender Rights Initiative at the Florida nonprofit law firm Southern Legal Counsel – plans to sue the state over the ban.
The ban by the Florida boards has not taken effect yet. So trans youth do still have access to gender-affirming care.
Nikole Parker, Director of Transgender Equality for Equality Florida, testified at the public hearing last week, and feels that Florida care is going backwards.
“I transitioned when I was 19 years old, and when I first transitioned, I did not know how to access gender-affirming care. So I was on black market hormones, which is extremely dangerous,” Parker said. “I was dosing myself. I was getting hormones from someone that I barely knew. And that is my genuine fear with what is going on currently. In 2023, we should not have to have people go to black market hormones or leave the state just because politicians are wanting to put politics before public health.”
All members of the Florida Board of Medicine were appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis. Parker continues:
“Regardless of the rhetoric that people hear, regardless of the misinformation that is out there, trans people are human beings and we just want to live happily and authentically as anyone else,” said Parker. “And just because our experience may not be widely understood, it just simply makes it different. And we should celebrate our differences versus nitpicking them and trying to make people feel bad for them.”
A full vote on the ban is expected, Parker says, around mid-March.
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