Hospitalized, Bullied, and Denied Care: Texas' War on Trans Kids

[Jilly_in_VA]

After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state officials in February to launch child abuse investigations targeting parents who helped their transgender kids get gender-affirming health care, a 14-year-old trans girl became so anxious about the prospect of losing access to her medications that she was pulled out of school and hospitalized for days. Some doctors and pharmacies around the state stopped offering teenagers life-saving puberty blockers and hormone treatments. A mental health provider in Austin abruptly withdrew care from a suicidal trans boy, leaving his parents to sleep on his bedroom floor night after night to ensure he didn’t kill himself. Many families fled the state.

Those are just some of the stories in a legal brief submitted to a state court last week on behalf of two LGBTQ-focused nonprofits and 13 Texas families with transgender kids. The families are begging the court to make permanent a prior temporary injunction prohibiting state officials from investigating parents under Abbott’s order. Although Texas’ Department of Family and Protective Services hasn’t yet ripped any trans children in Texas from their homes and sent them to foster care, the families argue its investigations have already had tragic consequences.

Since Abbott’s directive took effect, the Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT), one of the nonprofits cited in the brief, has received at least 60 reports from families struggling to obtain health care for trans children. Some doctors reportedly denied prescriptions for kids at the onset of puberty, hoping that it might be legally safer to offer them treatment at a later point. The nonprofit is working with 27 families in two metro areas who could not obtain puberty blockers, reversible prescriptions that give trans kids a chance to explore their gender identity as they grow older while temporarily delaying the puberty changes in their body that could make their gender dysphoria worse. Equality Texas, the other nonprofit in the brief, says kids have been turned away by doctors or denied prescriptions at pharmacies in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and the city of Garland.

Families say they’re also afraid to get their trans children other types of health care, worried that the kids’ gender identity and medical history might become known to the hospital and be shared with state authorities. According to the brief, when one trans kid went to a hospital for emergency psychiatric treatment, hospital staffers reported the mother to state officials, who accused her of child abuse. In another case, a trans child almost slept in a hallway at a mental health facility because the facility, citing legal risks, didn’t want to admit the kid to a ward. TENT intervened.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/hospitalized-bullied-and-denied-care-texas-war-on-trans-kids/

Rot in hell, Hot Wheels.

[onecaliberal]

1. I wish they could all Spontaneously combust.

[yankee87]

2. So mad

As always the f-ing Qpublican party is going after the ,”others”. I can’t imagine what the people and their families are going through. The war on our LGBTQI citizens is all about cruelty. I believe next will be wearing pink triangles.
Have to fight and vote. Also be like the drag brunch and have AK47s if needed. I’m just so mad

[IngridsLittleAngel]

3. Hot Wheels deserves worse than hell

There is ignorance, and there is malice. For him and his thugs to continue their war against children for "the crime of being different" shows none of this is about ignorance. He knows the harm this is causing and does it anyway. Malice. I imagine thinking of all the harm he's caused trans teens brings that evil, nasty smile to his face.

I have no doubt there have been tragic consequences of all of this... In Texas. In Florida. In large parts of the country. I fear one day we are going to find ourselves up to our eyeballs in stories about suicide attempts, suicides, assaults, even murders. All because of the "SAVE CHILDREN!" party and their crusade against children in 2022.

Hot Wheels needs to spend a long fucking time in court, and needs to find himself drowning in two different types of cases:

The first is pushing for permanent injunctions against Osama bin Abbott's cruel, bigoted, hateful and harmful efforts to enforce Sharia law on trans teens. Not just permanent injunctions, but injunctions enforced with teeth. It needs to be made clear to him that if he defies court orders, he goes to jail.

The second is being hit with lawsuit after lawsuit seeking damages for the damage and harm he has caused. There's no doubt he has caused plenty of harm, too. He's caused me more than anyone could imagine - and I'm not in Texas nor am I a teenager. I can't imagine being in the lone star banana republic in 2022.

The details in this article are disgusting - much like every other article about what's happened in Texas this year. It's gone well beyond trying to prevent gender-affirming care (and those efforts are abuse in and of themselves). They have tried to rip apart families, jail innocent parents, and completely dehumanize and erase these youth. All because Abbutt is a wicked, evil, cruel motherfucker.

Aren't we glad that trans youth is the biggest problem in Texas? I mean, thank goodness there haven't been petty little issues this year like a heatwave, power issues, and a school massacre.