Where We Get Our Hormones

Here in Connecticut and other places around the country one of the sources of Cross Gender Hormones for low income trans people is Planned Parenthood.

How defunding Planned Parenthood could wipe out transgender healthcare
For many transgender people, finding local clinics that provide medical services without bias can be near impossible, leaving thousands without basic careThe Guardian
By Molly Redden
March 2, 2017

Calvin Kasulke was living with his parents when he came out to them as a transgender man. All of a sudden, he recalled gingerly, “I was disinvited from living at home.”

He needed a new place to stay. And Ithaca, New York, where he had gone to college, was the obvious choice. He would have friends there, he figured, and a place to live.

“And also,” he said, “Planned Parenthood was there.”

Healthcare without Planned Parenthood: Wisconsin and Texas point to dark future

Unbeknown to many, Planned Parenthood is one of the largest sources in the US of transgender healthcare. The embattled provider offers hormone replacement therapy, which helps a person’s body appear more masculine or feminine, at dozens of its locations, and a growing share of its staff are trained to perform routine sexual health exams for trans patients.

“They are one of the most important providers of trans healthcare in the country,” said Harper Jean Tobin, the director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, adding that their clinics are some of the few transgender healthcare providers located outside major cities. “Many of their clinics are the only places for miles around that trans people can go to for hormone therapy, HIV tests, and pap smears, and not face discrimination.”

They also provide healthcare that is “trans friendly” many trans people fear going to a healthcare provider because they are afraid of how they will be treated by the medical and office staff.

Planned Parenthood in recent years has sought to address that problem. And it has made its clinics a magnet for thousands with few other options. Starting with Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes, in upstate New York, a growing number of its health centers have become places where trans people can begin to transition medically, as well as get basic reproductive services. Its centers use a newer model for gender transitioning that gives the patient input on whether to start their transition, rather than turning the decision over entirely to a psychiatrist. Some clinics have staff with detailed knowledge of how to update driver’s licenses, passports and social security cards to reflect someone’s name and gender.
[…]
Dinah says the care she has received at Planned Parenthood has been lifesaving. Recently, she worked up the courage to schedule her first physical in years. It was her first such exam since her transition, and during the breast cancer screening, she began to cry.

“It’s another thing that makes it real,” she said. “It meant that I’m a woman and I have to be treated like one.”

Sadly I don’t see any hope for us. With the dismantling of the Affordable Care Act that mandated healthcare coverage for us and the defunding of Planned Parenthood finding healthcare for us is going to get a lot, lot harder.