Thursday, March 02, 2023

Another Attack On Our Healthcare.

The right-wing conservatives are at it again, this going after our healthcare!

Conservative group sues Kaiser Permanente over transgender care
A conservative nonprofit announced a lawsuit Thursday against Kaiser Permanente for gender hormone therapies and procedures it provided to Chloe Cole, 18, who has become something of a celebrity in the anti-trans movement.
San Francisco Chronicle
By Erin Allday
February 23, 2023


The conservative nonprofit Center for American Liberty said Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente alleging that it provided inappropriate gender hormone therapies and surgical procedures to a teenager who later de-transitioned.

The teenager at the center of the lawsuit is Chloe Cole, 18, who has been outspoken nationally about her experiences with gender dysphoria, which led to her starting puberty blockers and hormone therapy at age 13 and getting a double mastectomy at 15. She decided to de-transition when she was 17.

In the time since, her case has become a political touchstone for conservative groups pushing against transgender rights and access to gender-affirming care for young people.

She has become the Cause célèbre for the right-wing conservatives.

“I didn’t have any feelings of regret or negative feelings about transition until after my surgery,” Cole said Thursday at a news conference in front of Kaiser’s Gender Pathways Clinic in Oakland, where she was treated. “After that I started to realize I missed having a more feminine body, I missed things like wearing dresses and skirts, I missed some of the little things about female socialization.”

Regret after surgery is quite common… for all surgeries not just gender-affirming surgery. The National Library of Medicine (PubMed) has a 2017 research paper about it.

Regret in Surgical Decision Making: A Systematic Review of Patient and Physician Perspectives
By Ana Wilson, Sean M Ronnekleiv-Kelly, Timothy M Pawlik


Conclusion: Self-reported decisional regret was present in about 1 in 7 surgical patients. Factors associated with regret were both patient- and procedure related. While most studies focused on patient regret, little data exist on how physician regret affects shared decision making.

That is 14% of the patients had some type of regret after surgery so doesn’t it make sense that there is a few trans people who have regret? The Chronicle article goes on to write,

De-transitioning is uncommon, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality. In a 2015 survey, about 8% of transgender respondents said they had de-transitioned at some point, though in most cases it was temporary and they later resumed transitioning. Only about 0.4% of respondents said they de-transitioned because they had realized gender transition was not what they wanted.

She even said

“I still have stress having to do with my birth sex,” Cole said. “But it’s actually gotten better after stopping transition and just living with what I have.”

So she even still has gender dysphoria.

“People like (Cole) are rare,” said Ebony Harper, executive director of California TRANScends, which advocates for transgender health equity. “But people on the right want to use them as a beacon of the masses of trans folks that are detransitioning and are unhappy.

“It’s purely about politics,” Harper said. “These people do not give a f— about these children. Chloe is just a pawn.”

Yup.


Yesterday I did an outreach at UConn School of Public Health, it was for a graduate class of only 3 students where I have been doing the outreach for around ten years.

Observations:

When I got to the classroom they were beginning the last presentation, it was on the need to educate medical providers to our needs and I was asked to comments on the PowerPoint. I reiterated the need to educate healthcare providers and that they can't be silent to injustice.

I am a member of a speakers bureau (this outreach was not through them). Normally I see 4 or 5 outreach requests per semester but lately it is 0. I don’t know if it is because of COVID or the Republican war on “Woke.”

My outreach connections have been retiring and my numbers have declined. I no longer do guest lectures at CCSU or SCSU and not as many at UConn that I used to do because of retirements.

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