GOP Seeks to Cut Funding to U.S. Hospitals Supporting Gender Transition

Reporting by Jael Holzman asks if Democrats will allow it

Hope by Pexels from Pixabay

Trans journalist Jael Holzman wrote for Rolling Stone today about threats to trans people’s access to gender-affirming care. Asawin Suebsaeng contributed reporting too.

It’s about a 15-minute read (and please do read it). Meanwhile, here’s how I’ve processed it.

Rolling Stone

I see three topics discussed here:

1. Republicans are going after gender-affirming care for people of all ages by threatening hospital funding.
2. Democrats have no clear position nor messaging strategy on trans rights.
3. Election postmortem: Republicans hope Democrats will infight.

1. Republicans are going after gender-affirming care for people of all ages by threatening hospital funding

Republicans plan to “short-circuit essentially all trans health care in America” by penalizing any hospital or clinic that provides gender-affirming care by yanking all its federal funds. It wouldn’t be only a specific procedure that wouldn’t be eligible for funding; rather, the entire hospital would forfeit all its federal funding if it assisted the gender transition of even one trans person.

The result would be:

a specialized field of medicine backed by reams of evidence demonstrating its need and benefits, practiced for more than half a century in the U.S. — ostracized, suddenly and loudly. It is hard to quantify how painful a funding ban legislation could be to the American trans community…

Holzman compares this to the 1970s anti-abortion Hyde Amendment which is the reason why most hospitals won’t perform abortions. The Hyde Amendment is reenacted every year as part of the government’s funding bill because Democrats aren’t willing to shut down the government to protest it.

Leveraging this strategy to end gender-affirming care in hospitals and multi-service…