As feds further restrict gender affirming care for minors, trans kids already cannot get the medical care in Spokane
Even before Thursday’s announcement of a federal rule stripping funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for minors, that care had stopped for transgender children in Spokane.
Many transgender individuals undergo gender-affirming care, which can change physical attributes of the body to align with that of the other sex from the one assigned at birth.
The major hospital systems in Spokane do not provide gender-affirming care to minors. MultiCare and Providence provide the care to transgender adults but never have for children, though some MultiCare facilities have provided gender-affirming care in Western Washington.
Previously, the only local medical provider that provided gender-affirming care for transgender minors was CHAS Health, but the organization stopped providing treatment in response to federal policy changes throughout the year.
“CHAS Health does provide gender-affirming care to adults but we do not provide those services to anyone under the age of 19, in accordance with Federal guidelines,” CHAS spokesperson Tamitha Shockley French said in a statement.
Betsy White’s teenage transgender daughter received gender-affirming care for most of her childhood until earlier this year. If CHAS no longer provides that care to transgender youth, White said the consequences could be “absolutely horrific” for Spokane’s transgender community.
Gender-affirming care most commonly involves the replacement of sex hormones with those of the opposite natal sex. Under this treatment, transgender women may experience breast growth, softening of skin, redistribution of fat across the body to the hips and breasts, and a decrease of testicular volume. Transgender men may experience facial and body hair growth, increased muscle mass, decreased fat mass, deepening of the voice, fat redistribution and clitoral growth.
Other forms of gender-affirming care include surgery and puberty blockers for prepubescent children, but they are much less common.
The new federal rules aim to stop medical caregivers from providing these treatments to anyone under the age of 18. While not banning the practice outright, every hospital and clinic providing the care relies on Medicare and Medicaid funding to operate.
“The Trump administration will not stand by while ideology, misinformation and propaganda push vulnerable young people into decisions they cannot fully understand and that they can never reverse on my watch,” said Health & Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Every prominent national medical association supports the use of gender-affirming care for minors.
“These policies and proposals misconstrue the current medical consensus and fail to reflect the realities of pediatric care and the needs of children and families,” American Academy of Pediatrics President Susan J. Kressly said in a statement.
White said she was “appalled, devastated and angry” when she first heard of the ban Thursday morning.
“There’s a lot of youth that are already balancing on a very precarious ledge, and this ban is pushing them off,” she said.
The removal of this treatment will increase suicidality among trans youth in Spokane, said Spectrum Center spokesperson KJ January.
“For trans youth in Eastern Washington and North Idaho, this ban creates fear and uncertainty and undermines the ability of providers to offer evidence-based health care. Policies that punish hospitals and providers for offering this care will not protect young people but will instead increase distress, force families to forgo care entirely, and place transgender youth at greater risk of harm,” January said.
White’s daughter has lived as a girl since she was 5 years old. She now faces her medical treatment being stripped away just six months shy of her 18th birthday.
“If she goes without hormones and blockers for six months, this could put her into full blown male puberty, and that scares the hell out of us,” White said.