Fear!

That is what the Republicans are doing, creating fear in the medical profession to have any trans patients for any treatment not just for Gender Dysphoria but for any medical problems. They see us like we have Leprosy.

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care
Health care professionals and parents of transgender youth are raising concerns about use of private medical records in the statewide probe
Missouri Independent.
By: Annelise Hanshaw
May 24, 2024

A state investigation of the Washington University Transgender Center in St. Louis expanded to include therapists and social workers across the state who work with minors seeking gender-affirming care.

Documents made public as part of various lawsuits show that Attorney General Andrew Bailey has obtained a collection of unredacted and loosely redacted records of transgender children, including a list of patients that received care at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

He is also seeking untethered access to the university’s digital medical records system.
The attorney general’s use of private medical records, and the targeting of therapists and counselors, has interrupted the health care of LGBTQ Missourians and has families worrying about their children’s privacy.

Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director for Missouri LGBTQ advocacy organization PROMO, told The Independent she fears that the pressure will drive health care providers out of the state, especially impacting rural Missourians.

“The attorney general has created a hostile environment for medical providers where they are afraid to stay and practice medicine,” she said.

Can you imagine that you are trans and have a really bad stomach ache, you go to a walk-in clinic and they refuse to treat you because you are trans and the doctors are afraid of getting arrested. While trans people are afraid of going to the healthcare providers because the state may subpoena your medical records.

Kelly Storck, a licensed clinical social worker with a focus on LGBTQ-positive therapy, was interviewed last year and expressed grave concerns about unredacted medical records of minors being in the hands of a state official who has repeatedly opposed gender-affirming care.

When the division contacted Storck for an interview, she hired a lawyer before meeting with the investigator.

During the meeting, she says the investigator had a small stack of unredacted letters Storck had sent the Transgender Center to recommend clients for gender-affirming care.

Big brother is watching you!
 

NC Newsline wrote,

“Laws banning gender-affirming care will have dire consequences for transgender youth,” said Riley, who is a plaintiff in the suit. “We do not need politicians in the exam rooms with us, overriding the decisions of families and their doctors or putting our professional licenses at risk for doing our jobs.

“Instead, providers in North Carolina should be able to provide the highest quality, evidence-based care to their transgender patients, just like we do for our other patients,” Smith said.

Newsline spoke to doctors who work with transgender patients across the state this month about how they’re reacting to the law and what it will mean for their practices and patients. Several declined to comment on the record, citing threats of violence to their practices or their homes from people opposed to their work. Others spoke on the condition they, their hospitals or practices not be directly identified due to both threats of violence and fear of political retaliation from the legislature.

“There’s a lot of confusion and fear right now,” said Katherine Croft, a nurse working in trans health care and board member of the LGBT Center of Raleigh. “It results in a lot of patients not knowing the right thing and maybe getting multiple different answers as to whether they can continue this medically necessary care. And there’s a lot of apprehension for those who were identified as trans earlier, were on track to get care but maybe hadn’t by the [August 1] date.”

The Republicans legislators knew that the laws would create fear in treating trans in both us and the medical professionals and that is exactly what they wanted it to do… create fear.

The Texas Tribune wrote that it is having the same chilling effect in Texas,

 "The reason why I'm leaving Texas is that it's unbearable for me,” Lopez said. “It's so devastating that I just can't bear living in a state where I feel oppressed and where I'm just seeing my patients suffer."

Lopez formerly provided gender-affirming care to trans youth as the director of the GENder Education and Care, Interdisciplinary Support (GENECIS) program, which was jointly run by the Children’s Medical Center and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. By the end of July, she’ll no longer practice at the Dallas hospital and plans to move out of Texas.

The far-right are given each other hi-fives over doctors who treat trans patients but what they ignore is that only a tiny part of their medical practices is for trans patients, the rest are diabetics, people with thyroid disease, and other endocrine diseases. Or they are OB/GYN who are fleeing the state because of anti-trans laws and anti-abortion laws. Many free clinics are closing and as a result breast cancer rates are going up in low income areas because the cancer is not being caught early enough.

The Missouri Independent goes on to write…

People who have received care at the Transgender Center have asked to be notified if their health records are accessed, but many assume some of their information is already in the attorney general’s hands.

[…]

The records investigators had of Storck’s patients included names, something Reed said she redacted before providing to the attorney general.

Big brother is watching you!

All these laws are based fake medical research by right-wing have been pushing out and being gobbled up by the right-wing legislators.

Scientific American write in “Anti-Trans Laws Will Have a Chilling Effect on Medicine”

In 2021 I lost a family member to the mental trauma of transgender discrimination, so I speak from a place of watching someone I love suffer from lack of support. These recent and proposed laws, none of which are grounded in evidence-based medicine, will affect the mental and physical health of adults and children and the families who support them.

[…]

Instead of enacting laws that deny the basic health rights of the trans community—and signal to trans individuals that they are not safe, accepted or supported—policy makers, clinicians and advocates need to work together to create laws that counteract and prevent the health disparities that are exacerbated by the enduring discrimination against this community.

The Republican legislators know that they are misrepresentating the data, that they lack of expertise, and violation of research standards in some reports/documents that have made claims challenging the evidence base for transgender healthcare. They know it but it backs up their dogma so they cite it to the detriment of us and for their far right-wing evangelical base.