A trans influencer and BBC voice actor has vowed to remove her GP after she was refused hormone treatment.
In a series of now-deleted and profanity-laden videos on Instagram, Charlie Craggs told how the experience left her speechless, angry and helpless.
Mrs Craggs, who played Cleo Proctor in the BBC audio drama Doctor Who: Redacted, recently moved from London to an undisclosed area in the countryside, where she bought a cottage with her mother.
The trans activist, who described herself as ‘the Grinch of the trans community’, told her 64,000 followers that her new GP would not prescribe her the female sex hormone oestrogen.
Trans women, who are biologically male, use the hormone to make their bodies better match their gender identity. It promotes breast growth and redistributes body fat, giving a trans woman more feminine curves. The drug can also inhibit the growth of both muscle and facial hair, but how effectively it combats the latter may vary from patient to patient.
Charlie Craggs as she attended The Crown’s Finale Celebration in London in December
In a plea to her GP to prescribe the medication, Mrs Craggs wrote: ‘Please don’t make my life more difficult than it already is’
In the Instagram video, Ms Craggs said the unnamed GP practice would face consequences if she delayed the decision and didn’t prescribe her hormones, saying: ‘You may be able to deny me service ladies, but you can’t be incompetent, so if I can ‘I don’t get healthcare than no one around me because I’m putting you all down’
Ms Craggs, who is in her early 30s, accused her doctor – whom she did not name – of refusing the prescription because they said they did not know “how to treat transgender people”.
“I was told by the head doctor at the practice… something like ‘we are not going to prescribe you hormones’ that I have been taking for ten years,” she said in the video on Instagram. which only lasted 24 hours before it was automatically deleted.
‘I jumped through every hoop I needed to get to it, and now all the person at the bottom of the chain, the GP, has to do is push a button and prescribe, ‘Hmm, we’ll do that do not”.
‘The Gender Identity Clinic, part of the NHS, has literally sent you letters saying, ‘Please prescribe this much estrogen to Mrs Craggs’, that’s all you have to do.
‘Read the letter and prescribe me 6 mg estrogen, you don’t have to undergo a sex change with me.’
Ms Craggs, who first came to public fame in a BBC Three documentary called Transitioning Teens, said the GP did this despite her telling them who she was.
“I am the Grinch of the trans community,” she said.
‘They also know this because I said on the phone: “I’m Charlie Craggs, I have a Wikipedia page”.’
Ms Craggs said the GP practice only informed her of their decision when her previous supply of hormones ran out.
“My appointment with them was on January 31, three weeks ago, and during the appointment she said, ‘we’re not sure, we’ll be in touch in two days,’” she said.
‘It took me three weeks to hear from them, I literally had to chase every week and I never heard anything again.’
And the year before that when she attended the Glamor Women of the Year Awards 2022 in London
Pictured from left to right is Doctor Who: edited writer Juno Dawson, former Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker and actress Charlie Craggs
Mrs. Craggs added, “You may deny me service, ladies, but you cannot be incompetent.
“So if I can’t get health care, no one around me can get it because I’m bringing you all down.”
Ms Craggs also posted some of the correspondence between her team of gender consultants and the GP practice, urging them to prescribe oestrogen.
It details how the hormone treatment has helped prevent hair loss and promote regrowth, and how the team is not concerned about the drug’s main “adverse effect” of erectile dysfunction because it is “not considered problematic.”
Mrs Craggs added her own plea to this correspondence to her GP, writing: ‘Please don’t make my life more difficult than it already is.’
She posted the letters with the text ‘What do I pay taxes for? Having to beg for my medication that I am legally entitled to.’
In response to her battle, Ms Craggs has pledged to campaign on the issue.
“I’m going to campaign because if I, the fucking Grinch of the trans community, can feel this way and be treated like this, I hate to think what those damn baby trans, those less sure of themselves, going through,” she said.
Ms Craggs previously launched one fundraising to give transgender people free self-defence lessons after she was spat at during a transphobic attack in London in a video that went viral.
Under UK regulations, a GP has the right to refuse to write a prescription for a patient – even if it is from a team of specialists, as in Ms Craggs’ case.
Under British law, it is the prescriber of a drug who becomes legally responsible for dispensing it and, by extension, for any side effects.
In practice, this type of situation usually occurs in niche areas of medicine, where specialist clinicians request GPs to supply powerful drugs with which they may be unfamiliar.
Ms Craggs first came to public prominence in a BBC Three documentary called Transitioning Teens
When this happens, a patient is normally referred back to the specialist team, who usually have an alternative means of dispensing the medication.
Advice from the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, and cited by GPs, makes it clear that such refusals can vary from GP to GP.
It says: ‘Each GP will make prescribing decisions based on what he or she is or is not prepared to take clinical responsibility for.
‘Some doctors may have special training or knowledge in a particular area of medicine, which makes it easy for them to prescribe and monitor a medicine, while many GPs would not.
‘It is clear that a GP must be aware of both their limitations and their skills and ensure they do not prescribe outside their knowledge or ability to ensure patient safety.
‘GPs are not required to provide all possible medical services to their patients, only those for which they contract, and these contractual arrangements may vary from practice to practice.’
Ms Craggs was contacted by MailOnline for comment.
She did not mention the general practice involved in her care in her social media posts.