Opinion: New Utah bill puts transgender youth at risk

Last week, the Utah House of Representatives reviewed HB0092, a bill sponsored by Representative Rex Shipp that would ban Utah doctors from providing gender-affirming healthcare to transgender youth. This bill is currently co-sponsored by Cache Valley Representative Mike Petersen and, if enacted, would cause an incredible amount of harm to Utah’s trans youth, and to its larger transgender community.

In a report released in 2019, the CDC revealed that about 1.8 percent of high school students identify as transgender (the numbers in the general population could be larger, but there is a margin of error, since trans youth don’t always self-identify or self-disclose for a number of reasons). That means that on average, each high school in Utah could have about sixteen trans students. This data doesn’t include anyone younger than high school age, but there are also young children who are trans. Among the trans high school students, 35 percent had attempted suicide in the past year. 

This bill would prevent doctors from giving children “medically unnecessary” puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy (or HRT), and gender-affirming surgeries. (It does contain a provision that such procedures can be done on intersex children, which is somewhat ironic given that advocates have long pushed against non-consensual surgeries to treat healthy   intersex children).

Earlier this year, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Dex Rumsey, a 15-year-old boy from Utah, said of his transition: “I was never comfortable under my own skin. I always felt wrong, disgusting and I hated myself. These hormones have allowed me to feel comfortable with who I am. It’s allowed me to be happier. I don’t hate myself, I’m not depressed, I don’t feel suicidal anymore.” In fact, a 2020 study in the journal Pediatrics showed that access to puberty blockers decreased the likelihood of suicidal ideation for trans youth who wanted them.

Being able to transition is medically necessary, just like an antidepressant is necessary for a young person with clinical depression. The availability of safe medical care and treatment is hugely important to transgender people who are simply trying to live as the people they are.

A video interviewing then-ten-year-old Rebekah Bruesehoff, a transgender girl, and her family highlights this. Her mother recalled the beginning of Rebekah’s transition: “At the time, it was the happiest I’d ever seen her, frolicking through the girl’s section of the clothing store, picking out clothes, and seeing what she liked. She was just a different kid. It was like a cloud lifted.”

Another study from Pediatrics, this one from 2018, advocated for both the safety and the necessity of gender-affirming care for trans kids. They show that puberty blockers are non-permanent and normal puberty resumes after a person stops taking them. The authors also pointed out that puberty blockers can prevent the need for future surgeries to reverse sex characteristics that develop at puberty.

This isn’t an issue of a two-year-old boy liking disney princesses and immediately receiving a vaginoplasty. The 2018 study said that the transition process involves consulting the family and the child, and “may include the pediatric provider, a mental health provider (preferably with expertise in caring for youth who identify as [transgender]), social and legal supports, and a pediatric endocrinologist or adolescent-medicine gender specialist, if available.”

Medical transition is a process that is well-thought-through and well-considered, and access to it has a huge impact on trans kids’ lives. This bill to block access to this potentially life-saving healthcare is grounded at best in ignorance and, at worst, in blatant transphobia. It isn’t needed, the majority of experts and people who would be affected don’t want it, and it should not be enacted into Utah law.

(Representative Mike Petersen did not respond to request for comment.)

Katelyn Allred is an opinion writer in her junior year of college. She’s studying English with an emphasis in creative writing and enjoys reading, listening to podcasts, and baking.

katelyn.allred@usu.edu