Missouri Trans Adults Brace for Treatment Cutoffs: What You Need to Know

Ellie Bridgman, a 23 year-old transgender and nonbinary person, worked her shift at a gas station in Union, Missouri on Thursday night. Ellie is looking forward to the day when she will no longer have access to gender-affirming treatments which make “life worth living” for them.

Missouri’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey, from the Republican party, just announced a new rule that all adults and children need to obey if they want to take medications or surgeries for transitioning gender. This is the first time such restrictions have been made.

People who are fighting for transgender rights have promised to take the state of Missouri to court before the new rule about them starts in April. This hasn’t been able to make Bridgman, who is transgender and from Missouri, feel any better since they think it might be time to leave the state.

If you’re looking to get medical help for gender identity, the regulations require that for three years, you must have had a bad feeling about your gender (which is called ‘gender dysphoria’), and be able to show proof of it. You also need to have seen a therapist specifically 15 times in 18 months before you can receive care. Furthermore, doctors must screen you for things like autism and social media addiction, and any mental health problems or issues you may have must be treated before they give you medical treatment.

Some people will be allowed to keep their medicines without delay if they receive the needed checkups. Bridgman uses ‘she/they’ pronouns and has autism and depression. She said she only has two choices: either move far from home to a place where it is easier to get gender-affirming care, or take the dangers of ordering hormones online illegally.

On Friday, she went to a drugstore to buy all her prescribed medicines with her own money.

Bridgman believes that putting limits on transition for people who are depressed is just an excuse not to let them go through transition. She explained that many transgender people become depressed because of their gender discomfort, and you can’t really treat the depression without helping them deal with the gender discomfort.

Before the last summer, Bridgman wasn’t feeling very good. She said it felt like her life had no meaning and she was thinking about bad things. Gender-affirming care was important to her because it was her “last chance at having a better life”.

The government is trying to make sure transgender people have access to healthcare. Some people in Missouri are creating laws that will make this hard or even impossible for transgender people.

At least 13 US states have recently passed new laws that stop or ban young people from getting medical treatments related to changing their gender. There are also more states having politicians discuss if they should pass similar laws. Some gay and transgender rights groups in Missouri say the law from their state goes even further than most of the other ones.

Three states have placed a limit on gender-related treatments. However, only the missouri law is limiting adults from receiving these services too. Cathy Renna – a representative for the National LGBTQ Task Force – said this rule shows how Republicans are now widening the restrictions beyond just kids which activists had warned about some time ago.

Renna said that if something works in one place, people will try it somewhere else. This is after someone who used to work at a clinic helping transgender youth in St. Louis said that doctors from the Washington University Transgender Center were giving treatments to patients without really studying them carefully. So now Bailey has put a stop to this.

Mr. Bailey is looking into the clinic, but he hasn’t released any findings yet. Some people are challenging the accusations of mistreatment, including another employee and patients. Neither Mr. Bailey nor the university wanted to talk about this when contacted by phone or email.

Dr. McNamara, a doctor from Yale’s School of Medicine who deals with teen health, says that there is strong proof to support giving access to hormone treatments and other services related to gender affirmation.

Bailey’s rule says doctors need to show their patients papers that include almost twenty different warnings about gender-affirming treatments. These warnings are considered a form of conversion therapy which Doctor McNamara believes doesn’t really work. She said there is no evidence to suggest psychotherapy is the only effective treatment.

Stacy Cay, who lives in Kansas City and is an autistic trans woman, has been saving vials of a medication called estrogen. Stacy only needs to take a little bit of this medication, so she was able to save up enough for about one year. When she runs out, she’ll have to travel somewhere else or move to another place to get the medicine that she needs.

Cay said that because of her depression, she won’t be able to get hormones. It is also difficult for her because having autism might make it hard to get medical care related to gender-affirming. The law doesn’t say if having autism keeps someone from getting this care, but there must still be an extra evaluation.

A study that was published in 2020 found that transgender and gender-diverse people are up to 6 times more likely than cisgender people to be autistic. They were also more likely to struggle with other problems like depression or developmental issues.

Cay said that some people want to make it look like autistic people cannot decide what’s good for them with regards to medical decisions. To fight this view, Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union have plans to challenge this new rule in court.

Missouri has the same court (the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) that stopped Arkansas from stopping transgender kids from getting help with their gender identity last year. Additionally, Judges have blocked Alabama from doing the same thing. Republican legislators in Missouri said that they won’t let adults get help either.

Missouri might stop giving treatments to kids under 18 years old but adults can still get them if they have private insurance or are willing to pay for their own healthcare. Senator Mike Moon said that he believes it is bad for a person’s body and mind to get these treatments – which is why adults should be allowed to make their own decisions about what kind of treatments they want.

Schoenbaum told us what was happening in Raleigh, North Carolina. Lieb reported from Jefferson City. The Associated Press editor Jeff McMillan also shared details about Scranton, Pennsylvania.