Study asserts gender-affirming care bans based on uncertainty
A study by Joanna Wuest, assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, argues that recent state bans on gender-affirming care for minors identifying as transgender are based on faulty or distorted evidence.
A study co-authored by a Mount Holyoke College professor contends that conflicting evidence and expertise were used to justify recent state bans on gender-affirming care for minors identifying as transgender.
Joanna Wuest, assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, spoke to the Daily Hampshire Gazette about the study, which was co-authored with Briana Last, a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University in New York. She told the newspaper that she was interested in discovering why there were so many discussions about the uncertainty of gender-affirming care treatments, including the use of puberty and hormone blockers, that led several states to enact bans.
“There is some uncertainty in gender-affirming care, but we need to recognize that there’s plenty of uncertainty in very routine use of pharmaceutical drugs and surgical procedures that have nothing to do with gender-affirming care,” Wuest said in an interview. “We were interested in how there is a higher bar set for gender-affirming care, at least among ban proponents.”
The study, published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Social Science & Medicine, examines 375 citations used in litigation over the first gender-affirming care ban for minors, Arkansas’ Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act of 2021. Other states, such as Texas, Missouri and Tennessee, have since enacted gender-affirming care practices, including hormone treatment and surgery.
Through her research, Wuest found that many citations could be traced back to organizations such as Scottsdale, Arizona-based nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, which receives heavy funding from conservative groups and calls itself an “alliance-building legal ministry” that advocates for religious freedom. Additionally, she found that several expert witness declarations did not have any clinical research experience in gender-affirming care but rather worked in other medical fields such as endocrinology and plastic surgery.
“Many of these state bills are based on a couple of models that were created and distributed by conservative political organizations,” she said. “This attack on gender-affirming care for minors is not exactly an organic opposition to this form of health care or trans rights but is rather incredibly coordinated from the most powerful groups in conservative politics.”