Transgender Youth Care Restrictions Must Not Pass

This morning, the Montana Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony on SB99, which would ban all gender-affirming medical care in Montana for transgender children and teens under 18. This bill, should it pass, will ban the use of safe, effective, and widely endorsed pediatric gender-affirming medical treatments including puberty blockers, hormones, and surgical care.

I listened with grief and horror to the testimony of religious extremists who directly equated gender-affirming care to childhood sexual abuse. Examples include references to “God-given sex” and that alterations in sex and gender “have no biological equivalent in nature”. One parent testified that her son “wanted to be an airplane” when he was young — as if this were evidence that children are inherently untrustworthy. Most concerningly, proponents of the bill repeatedly cited a blatantly false statistic that 80% of transgender youth who transition will eventually experience regret and “detransition” — that is, return to a gender expression that matches their natal sex.

Both in the medical literature and in my clinical experience, detransition is incredibly rare. Most current research has found a detransition rate of 2–8%. However, this number alone might imply that all patients who detransition experience regret or doubt about their gender identity. In fact, a recent study from 2022 surveyed over 27,000 transgender patients who had detransition. The results paint a stark picture of our country’s bigotry. “The most common reasons cited…