Latest news with #AdvocatesforTransEquality
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Donald Trump's election triggered transgender people to contemplate DIY hormones & suicide: study
Even before executive orders were signed in January or court decisions handed down, fear was already surging through transgender communities across the United States. A new study from the University of Vermont, appearing in JAMA Network Open, captures that fear in stark detail. Titled 'Access to Gender-Affirming Care and Alternatives to That Care Among Transgender Adults,' the research found that every single one of 489 transgender, nonbinary, and intersex respondents believed they could lose access to gender-affirming medical care under the shifting political climate. Keep up with the latest in + news and politics. 'This is a population that already feels that their access to care is constantly under threat,' said Teresa Graziano, the study's lead author, who uses they/them pronouns. 'It was startling.' Related: What does Donald Trump's 'shocking and devastating' victory and a second term mean for the LGBTQ+ community? The survey, conducted between the 2024 election and Inauguration Day 2025, revealed a level of distress that transcended fear and entered the realm of survival. More than 21 percent of participants reported that they would feel suicidal if their access to care were cut off. Graziano said one participant explicitly told them, 'killing myself is easier than living without my hormones and my gender affirming care.' Particularly alarming to Graziano was how many respondents described preparing for life without medical support. Nearly a third said they would turn to black-market hormones or attempt to synthesize hormones at home if care were banned. 'My concern as a health care provider is that they do not necessarily know that they are receiving sterile products or the products that they think they're receiving,' Graziano said. 'They may not be using doses that are safe or appropriate for them because it may not translate one-to-one with what they've been using in the past.' The Trump administration has moved quickly to implement policies redefining sex as strictly male or female and directing federal agencies to explore limits on gender-affirming care, particularly for minors. While no federal ban on adult care is currently in place, the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision in Skrmetti upholding Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors has fueled deep anxieties that similar laws could spread across the country. Related: Trump administration announces end to gender-affirming care for transgender veterans National advocates say the Vermont study confirms broader trends. A spokesperson for Advocates for Trans Equality told The Advocate, 'This new study echoes what we found in our 2022 U.S. Trans Survey health report that we released last month, which captures the experiences of 84,170 trans adults across the country, and what millions across our country who are losing access to their health care thanks to Trump's budget reconciliation bill are saying: Trump's policies have consequences—all of us are less healthy and less safe, and many trans people will die without the transition-related care they need.' For Rep. Becca Balint, Vermont's first out lesbian member of Congress, the study's findings reflect conversations happening at home. 'It mirrors what I am hearing directly from trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming folks, intersex people in Vermont and their families,' Balint said in an interview with The Advocate. 'This level of anxiety about not being able to get the care that they need and that they deserve and that will keep them alive is something that I'm hearing from a lot of my constituents.' Related: Supreme Court rules states can ban gender-affirming care for youth in U.S. v. Skrmetti 'In the last few months, when I am back in Vermont and I am at an event, inevitably, either someone who identifies as trans or nonbinary or their family will come up to me and they will tell me just how scared they are that they're not going to be able to get health care,' she said. 'And more broadly, just deep despondency that their own government is coming after them.' While Balint called it 'of course, a shocking statistic that over 20 percent would consider taking their own lives,' she said the finding was, tragically, not surprising. 'They have been told now for two and a half years in earnest by the Republican party and by Trump that they don't matter,' she said. 'That they don't care about the lives of these people, that they will say anything and do anything, and they will scapegoat them.' Balint said many constituents have expressed what it feels like 'to have your government weaponized against you,' and warned that political rhetoric has real consequences for mental health and safety. 'When they don't see us as elected officials standing with their civil rights, standing with their right to the health care that they need and deserve, of course, it looks bleak,' she said. Related: LGBTQ+ mental health crisis center says calls have surged with Donald Trump's inauguration She sees a strong connection between today's threats to transgender people's access to health care and the fight for reproductive freedom. 'I link those all the time, especially for constituents who might have a hard time understanding the lives of trans people because they don't necessarily have somebody in their family or within their close social circle,' Balint said. 'I always say it's the same thing: you're talking about people having control over their own bodies.' Balint emphasized that cutting off access to care won't make transgender people disappear; it simply pushes them into unsafe, underground options. She said, 'transgender people have always existed and always will, as part of humanity itself.' People, she noted, will go to great lengths to obtain the care they need, even if that means risking black-market treatments. Instead of forcing people into such dangerous paths, Balint urged, 'We need to stop demonizing this population who is just trying to live their lives.' If you or someone you know needs mental health resources and support, please call, text, or chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit for 24/7 access to free and confidential services. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at or text START to 678678. This article originally appeared on Advocate: Donald Trump's election triggered transgender people to contemplate DIY hormones & suicide: study RELATED Montana court strikes down ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors Hundreds protest Pittsburgh hospital for caving to Trump and denying trans youth gender-affirming care Supreme Court rules states can ban gender-affirming care for youth in U.S. v. Skrmetti
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
‘He Is Working to Erase Us': A Trans Activist on the Real Reason Trump's Budget Bans Trans Care
Ash Lazarus Orr (he/they) has served as the press relations manager at Advocates for Trans Equality for two and a half years. He has been an organizer in West Virginia for over a decade, focusing on the intersectionalities of gender-affirming care and abortion access. They're also an abortion storyteller for We Testify and Planned Parenthood. Transgender rights are once again on the chopping block for Republicans' political gain. The House's proposed budget in the so-called 'big, beautiful bill' includes measures that would deny life-saving, medically necessary, and evidence-based transition-related health care to trans people of all ages — banning it from Medicaid (where an estimated 152,000 trans Americans are enrolled) and no longer requiring Obamacare plans to cover it. This bill intentionally puts trans people's lives at risk, and is just the latest in a series of calculated attempts to divide and distract the American people, while dehumanizing some of the country's most vulnerable citizens. More from Rolling Stone Harvard Sues Trump Administration Over Move to Expel Foreign Students Trump Resumes Effort to Destroy Economy Trump's Tax Bill Would Decimate the Affordable Care Act The bill is being sold to the public as a set of historic tax cuts. But in reality, it's not about fiscal responsibility: It's a cruel strategy by anti-trans, extremist politicians to push trans, nonbinary, and intersex people out of public life. From our workplaces and schools to our health care, housing, and basic freedoms, the Trump administration and its allies are working to erase us. They are trying to make it harder just to exist, let alone thrive. Let me be perfectly clear: transition-related health care — which includes everything form hormones and puberty blockers to voice therapy, mental health support, and gender-affirming primary care — is health care. It is safe and essential, backed by decades of medical research, and supported by every major medical and mental health association in the United States. It's recognized as being safe and effective, and essential. These proposed cuts are flying in the face of medical consensus. Stripping away health care for anybody is un-American. Denying trans people access to medically necessary care goes against the most basic values that this country was founded on: freedom, dignity, and the right to pursue life and liberty. Health care is a human right for everyone — including trans people. Along the same lines, bodily autonomy is a core American value. Like all Americans, trans people and their families should be able to go to their medical providers and not have politicians interfering in these deeply personal medical decisions. We must be free to pursue, alongside our doctors, the medical care that lets us survive and flourish. This proposed ban undermines our fundamental right to privacy and self determination. Unfortunately, this bill is only the beginning. It's part of a broader political agenda and calculated strategy to fuel fear, blame marginalized communities, and distract the public away from the real causes of economic hardship — corporate greed, failing infrastructure, and chronic under-investment in public services. Instead of tackling these problems, Republicans are continuing to fuel manufactured outrage to score political points, because this administration wants people pointing fingers at their neighbors instead of holding the powerful accountable. In practice, this ban on transition-related health care would do nothing but disrupt an already overwhelmed health care system. The very people who are already most vulnerable to systemic discrimination and economic instability are now being potentially stripped of access to life-saving care, and it's all for political show. If passed, this bill is going to affect every single person that is utilizing Medicaid. It will disproportionately impact folks who live in low-income, rural, or spread-out regions. We are going to see so many folks who are already residing in health care deserts — which are continuing to grow year by year — lose access. People will suffer because of this. Though we have been singled out in this bill, trans people are just like everyone else you know. We are your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues. Like every other person in this country, we deserve access to health care. This is a moment to choose to be on the right side of history. Lawmakers must reject bigotry and show leadership by defending access to trans health care — not take it away from vulnerable communities. Again, this is not just about trans people: laws like this one, if passed, will impact every single person using programs like Medicaid, and those who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. I strongly encourage folks to reach out to their senators and demand that they vote no on this bill. Because trans people deserve equal rights, and to live our lives fully and authentically. As told to Elizabeth Yuko Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up
Axios
16-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Justice Department sues Maine for allowing transgender athletes in girls sports
Attorney General Pam Bondi is suing Maine's education department Wednesday after the state refused to bar trans athletes from girls' sports in accordance with an order from President Trump. The big picture: The standoff deepened last week when Maine's attorney general refused to sign an agreement to force the state education agency to change its policy on transgender athletes. Maine argues Title IX does not prohibit schools from allowing transgender girls to participate in girls' sports. Driving the news: "They must not be reading the same Title IX that we're reading," Bondi said at a Wednesday press conference announcing the lawsuit. She said her office is seeking an injunction and is considering whether to "retroactively pull" federal funds from the state "for not complying in the past." Bondi said, "We have exhausted every other remedy. We tried to get Maine to comply. We don't like standing up here and filing lawsuits." Zoom out: The Department of Education on Friday announced it would move to pull Maine's federal education funding and was referring its Title IX investigation into the state education department to the DOJ. "I hope Governor [Janet] Mills will recognize that her political feud with the president will deprive the students in her state of much more than the right to fair sporting events," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said at Wednesday's conference. Riley Gaines, who has emerged as the activist face of anti-trans sports participation, also spoke at the press conference. In 2022, Gaines tied a transgender woman for fifth place in a college swimming event, losing to four other cisgender women. The other side: Mills vowed in a Wednesday statement to "vigorously defend" Maine against the DOJ's civil lawsuit. "Today is the latest, expected salvo in an unprecedented campaign to pressure the State of Maine to ignore the Constitution and abandon the rule of law," her statement read. Mills continued, "This matter has never been about school sports or the protection of women and girls, as has been claimed, it is about states' rights and defending the rule of law against a federal government bent on imposing its will, instead of upholding the law." What they're saying: Ash Lazarus Orr of Advocates for Trans Equality, described the suit as "another example of the escalation in the federal government's attacks on trans youth" in a statement to Axios. "This lawsuit, rooted in the Trump administration's discriminatory executive order barring trans women and girls from participating in women's sports, is a malicious and baseless move that puts politics over students' rights," Orr said. Catch up quick: The back-and-forth began earlier this year with a brief clash between Trump and Mills during a National Governors Association event. After Trump threatened to revoke the state's funding if it did not comply with his order, Mills replied, "we're going to follow the law," before adding, "See you in court." Trump answered, "Good, I'll see you in court."
Axios
04-04-2025
- Health
- Axios
Trump uses child abuse awareness proclamation to bash transgender people
President Trump 's decision to target transgender care in a proclamation declaring April National Child Abuse Prevention Month "betrays" the month's purpose, LGBTQ advocates said. Why it matters: Framing the trans youth experience as "abuse" further stigmatizes an already vulnerable community, as the Trump administration tries to erase trans people from American life through policies limiting access to health care, careers, sports, education and more. Driving the news: Trump's Thursday proclamation singled out transgender care, labeling it a form of child abuse without acknowledging the most common risk factors for neglected or abused children. "It is deeply disingenuous for Trump to use National Child Abuse Prevention Month as a platform to attack and stigmatize the trans community," Ash Lazarus Orr, a spokesperson for Advocates for Trans Equality, told Axios. Reality check: Gender-affirming care is supported as both medically appropriate and potentially life saving for children and adults by major medical associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association. Drugs like puberty blockers are temporary and reversible. They are given to trans youth and non-trans youth who experience early onset puberty. What they're saying: Trump's proclamation "is vile and upsetting but importantly it is just a press release," Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU's LGBT & HIV Project said in a statement on Instagram. "It does not change the law or direct any agency action. But it does continue to suggest that the government is moving towards efforts to explicitly criminalize trans life and support of trans people." "Using the language of 'child protection' to justify the oppression of trans youth betrays the very values this month is meant to uphold," Orr said. "Denying trans youth medical care won't change who they are." Threat level: Trump wrote that "a stable family with loving parents" is a safeguard against child abuse, but most victims are abused by a parent, according to the National Children's Alliance. By the numbers: In 2022, a reported 434,000 perpetrators abused or neglected a child, per the alliance. 76% of children were victimized by a parent or legal guardian in substantiated child abuse cases, meaning that child protective services agencies determined that abuse or neglect occurred. Zoom out: Trump in January signed an executive order to defund youth gender-affirming care and a separate one threatening funding for K-12 schools that accommodate transgender children.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In Washington, an afternoon of solidarity for trans rights
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hundreds of people gathered Monday at the National Mall to recognize Transgender Day of Visibility. College students stood alongside veterans, federal workers, retirees and concerned family members. They packed umbrellas for the spring rain and brought Pride flags, too. They held up handmade signs that read 'Trans by the grace of God' and 'Trump is stealing our future.' As members of Congress stood in front of the U.S. Capitol to list all the ways the Trump administration is harming their trans constituents, they listened. Both speakers and attendees said this fight belongs to them, regardless of their gender identity. One cisgender woman in the crowd, a 48-year-old federal employee, joined to support her family. Her daughter is trans and so are a few of her nieces and nephews, she said. On her lanyard at work, she wears a trans butterfly pin and another with a rainbow encircled by the words, 'you're safe to be you around me.' As a federal employee, the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the uncertain political environment for federal workers, said she has watched the Trump administration erase thousands of jobs and billionaire Elon Musk's task force take over federal agency buildings. The final line crossed, the moment that would push her over the edge, would be if she's asked to take off her pins. 'I would resist against that,' she said. 'And I hope that I wouldn't lose my job over it, but this is more important than my job, honestly, even though we're a single-income family. I've been working with the federal government for 20 years. But it's just that important.' Trans Day of Visibility, or TDOV for short, was created to give trans people a day of joy. It's a day to celebrate being out and unapologetically trans, nonbinary or gender non-conforming. But as the last five years have brought rising anti-trans political attacks, TDOV has also become something else: a day of loud resistance. As the Trump administration tries to make it harder for trans Americans to live openly without fear of harassment and discrimination, more trans people — and their allies — see this day as a form of protest. 'My call to action today is to get involved,' Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director for Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE), said on stage at the rally. 'Register to vote. Vote in all those local elections that everyone else ignores. Run for office yourself. If you want a different style of activism, volunteer at your local LGBTQ+ community center. Mentor a trans kid. Start a trans bookclub. Protest outside a courthouse. … Don't just watch things happen, make things happen. History is made by those of us who take the initiative to show up.' Other speakers, including Democratic members of Congress, made similar calls to action, urging trans people and their allies to resist the political attacks against them. Those lawmakers stressed that rolling back trans rights is just a stepping stone to attacking other marginalized groups — and that coming together is required to defend against those assaults. That's the message that New Hampshire state Rep. Alice Wade, a transgender woman, delivered from the stage on Monday. The stakes of these anti-trans attacks are deadly, she said, and they affect everyone, Republican or Democrat. On Election Day last year, outside her local polling place, Wade said she met a Republican volunteer who confided that his son's death the previous summer had kept him from engaging much in politics. It was hard for him to talk about it, the volunteer told Wade. But by the end of the night, he was ready to open up. 'Right about the time the polls had closed, I started to pack up my things, and he pulled me aside and he asked me a question, 'Are you transgender?' And I said, 'Yes.'' That was the invitation he was looking for. He shared with Wade that his son was a transgender man who had taken his own life. He then asked about her experiences as a trans woman and what could have contributed to his child's suicide. 'I shared how deeply painful it can be for trans people to go through life in a society hostile to our very existence and how transitioning saved my life six years ago,' she said on stage. 'Long after he left, I couldn't stop thinking about that conversation. About a father just trying to understand his child and cope, and how much pain could be avoided if we didn't treat trans people like political weapons.' From 2018 to 2022, the number of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth in states that passed anti-trans laws increased by as much as 72 percent, according to a study published last fall. And when the presidential race was called for Donald Trump on November 5, calls and texts to a leading LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization exploded in a massive outpouring of anxiety over the election results. In the crowd on Monday, trans people who have been living in that heightened state of fear since Election Day felt a moment of reprieve and solidarity. Fenyx Mackenzie, a 22-year-old student at Howard University, stood with 21-year-old Miles Sanchez on the National Mall, wrapped in an embrace under a trans pride flag while listening to the speakers. Seeing a united crowd standing up for trans rights — including many cisgender people and people from older generations — made an impression on them. 'Everything has been very stressful recently, so having this sort of event is nice,' Mackenzie said. 'It makes it a little bit less scary and isolating.' For the past few months, it feels like every marginalized group is being targeted at once, Sanchez said — and it's all happening so quickly. They're not sure what to do, they said; just going through the motions of everyday life is a challenge. They've been looking for a sense of community. At this rally, they finally felt that. The Trans Day of Visibility rally was organized by the Christopher Street Project, a transgender advocacy group, and co-hosted by LGBTQ+ and civil rights groups including the National Organization for Women, the Human Rights Campaign and Advocates for Trans Equality. Speakers from Congress included House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York and Rep. Sara Jacobs, co-chair of the Transgender Equality Task Force. The post In Washington, an afternoon of solidarity for trans rights appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
