Gender-affirming care is being threatened by the White House. That means your nose job, boob job, butt lift and hormonal medications may be at risk thanks to new actions from the Trump administration.
The Office of Population Affairs describes gender-affirming care as a patient-centered, supportive form of healthcare that aligns individuals’ outward physical traits with their gender identity. According to the University of California, San Francisco, healthcare that qualifies as gender-affirming includes hormone therapy, surgical procedures and other interventions like voice modification and chest binding.
A study published by Cambridge University Press in 2022 found that in one year, 65% of individuals who identified as transgender were receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy and 8% had some gender-affirming surgical procedure.
But trans people aren’t the only ones receiving this care.
Estrogen-replacement hormone therapy is used to treat symptoms of menopause in cisgender women, and cisgender men are prescribed testosterone supplements to fight back against declining testosterone levels as they age.
Gender-affirming care that cisgender people receive isn’t limited to hormones. Cisgender women dominate plastic surgery demographics for most procedures. Some cisgender people even elect to receive irreversible genital surgeries purely for cosmetic reasons.
A common argument presented by Republicans is that these procedures are cosmetic, not gender-affirming. In reality, they are both.
Gender is often evaluated by society through a quick examination of outward physical features like facial and body structure. Our minds classify individuals as male and female automatically. Cisgender people may alter their bodies, haircuts and the physical shapes of their body parts and attempt to reshape their faces with makeup or plastic surgery, all to appear more like the societal interpretation of what their gender should look like.
Most people aren’t really as far removed from gender-affirming care as we think we are.
Besides all that – does it really matter who receives this care when it is proven to save lives?
A 2024 survey from The Trevor Project found that 46% of transgender and nonbinary young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.
In a JAMA Pediatrics study from 2022, it was discovered that of a selection of transgender and nonbinary youths, individuals had 60% lower odds of depression and 73% lower odds of suicidality after a year of receiving gender-affirming care.
An executive order signed on day one by President Donald Trump targets transgender people, stating the government will only recognize male and female as two unchangeable sexes. Another executive order attempted to federally defund gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth under 19 years old.
Executive Order 14190, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” even suggests blocking schools from supporting students who are transitioning socially, which means that the schools would lose federal funds if they use names and pronouns that align with transgender students’ gender identities.
As a result, The Trevor Project survey states that 90% of LGBTQ+ young people said their well-being was negatively impacted due to recent politics.
There is an increased need for the support and protection of transgender and nonbinary people’s rights during the next four years, and recognizing that gender-affirming care is a right that belongs to everyone is just one way to contribute.
Everyone should have the right to healthcare, cisgender or not.
