Transgender Missourians are posting heartbreaking videos on social media about being forced to “de-transition” once their sex reassignment drugs are banned, under new rules that take effect this week.
Others are trading tips online about getting the sex hormones they need, or finding a telehealth doctor to help them once Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s strict new emergency restrictions go into effect Thursday.
Bailey’s first-of-its-kind rule, introduced over fears of young people receiving irreversible treatments in Missouri, places numerous restrictions on both adults and children before they can receive puberty-suppressing drugs, hormones or surgery.
In a widely shared TikTok video, Milo Paasch, a senior student from Springfield, Missouri, said the new rules would likely cut off his access to testosterone, which deepens his voice and gives him different masculine characteristics.
‘I’m afraid. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Testosterone has been a life saver for me,” says Paasch, born as a woman, in the clip.
“It’s not fair, but since when has America been fair?” said Milo Paasch, a senior from Springfield, Missouri
Alejandra Caraballo, a prominent male-to-female transition and Harvard Law School instructor, said she was “stocking up” her estrogen stores in case they were banned or her health insurance stopped covering them
“By taking me off my testosterone now, I’m taking away my happiness and my health.”
Paasch says his sex hormones could be cut off because he was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, and Bailey’s strict new rules restrict transgender medicine for adults with mental health issues.
Leaving Missouri is also not an option, added Paasch, whose identity cannot be verified. He has a scholarship to study at the Kansas City Art Institute and says, “I don’t want to give up on my dream to get out of this hell.”
“It’s not fair, but since when has America been fair?”
Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri challenged the rule in court on Monday before it takes effect on April 27 — but that has done little to allay the concerns of many trans-Missourians.
Robert Fischer, spokesman for the state’s largest LGBTQ group, Promo Missouri, said his colleagues interacted with trans residents who were “extremely upset that their care is under attack.”
“We’ve heard from several individuals and parents of trans children who are deciding whether or not to leave the state and that they need to have step-by-step action plans if this rule goes through,” Fischer told DailyMail. .com.
Plume, a telehealth provider of gender-affirming care as it is known, has launched an “emergency response” to the Missouri rule, saying it is “providing prompt care to as many trans and non-binary people as possible at no cost.” ‘
Dr. Izzy Lowell, owner of Queermed, another telehealth provider, said Missouri residents can cross state lines into an area where trans healthcare is not banned and get a prescription for hormones from a parking lot near the border.
Still, Dr. Lowell added, those who don’t own a car or live in the Missouri interior could struggle.
“It’s going to be devastating,” Dr. Lowell told DailyMail.com.
“Patients are already panicking. Hormone therapy is widely known to cut suicide rates in half among transgender teens, who have very high suicide rates. So I expect that to go up.’
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at the mic and says hormone treatments and puberty blockers are ‘experimental’
People applaud at a rally to ban gender-affirming health care for minors at the Missouri Statehouse in Jefferson City
The Missouri ruling has sent shockwaves across the country, as Republican politicians in many conservative states have sought to clamp down on transgender care for youth.
It is banned for children in more than a dozen states this year, but many movements are facing legal challenges.
Alejandra Caraballo, a prominent male-to-female transition and Harvard Law School instructor, said she was “stocking up” her estrogen stores in case they were banned or her health insurance stopped covering them in the next year .
“This is where the trans community will be in 2023,” she tweeted.
Under Missouri’s new rules, medical treatments that confirm gender can only be provided by doctors to people who have experienced an “intense pattern” of documented gender dysphoria for three years.
They must also get at least 15 sessions per hour with a therapist for at least 18 months.
Patients should also be screened for autism and “social media addiction” first, and any psychiatric symptoms of mental health problems should be treated and resolved.
Bailey announced the rule after Jamie Reed, a former employee of a St. Louis trans youth clinic run by Washington University, revealed how doctors and therapists rush children into trans drugs and procedures.
In whistleblower testimony like a bombshell, Reed revealed how the clinic administered a litany of irreversible treatments to minors, often without parental consent, or after bullying parents into giving consent by saying their children would commit suicide.
Julia Williams holds a sign as a counter-protest at a rally for a ban on gender-affirming health care legislation, at the Missouri Statehouse in Jefferson City
An online campaigner named Dominick is urging “cis-allies,” meaning straight people, to help transgender people who are getting their drugs cut in Republican states
The Missouri ACLU and Lambda Legal argue that Bailey, a Republican, has no authority to use a state consumer protection law to regulate gender-affirming care through emergency regulation.
The rule is “an unwarranted and discriminatory attempt to limit healthcare options for transgender people,” Southampton Community Healthcare prosecutor Dr Samuel Tochtrop, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
Gender-affirming care, as it’s called, includes everything from puberty blockers to sex hormones and, in rare cases for trans children under 18, surgery.
The FDA approved puberty blockers 30 years ago to treat children with precocious puberty — a condition that causes sexual development to begin much earlier than normal. Sex hormones — synthetic forms of estrogen and testosterone — were approved decades ago to treat hormone disorders or as birth control pills.
But the FDA has not specifically approved those drugs to treat transidentifying youth. Instead, they have been used “off-label” for that purpose for many years, a common and accepted practice for many medical conditions.
Proponents of gender-affirming care say it is life-saving for a suicide-prone group.
Opponents of the trans ideology say that sex is determined at birth and cannot be changed, that medical groups have been hijacked by trans activists, and that politicians should step in and prevent parents, doctors or therapists from permanently harming children.
Many have been alarmed by the surge in the number of teenage girls with autism and other mental health problems seeking sex reassignment drugs in recent years, and by new studies linking puberty blockers to weaker bones and osteoporosis.