Press Contact: Naveen Farrani, [email protected], (512) 621-5231
Houston, TX – Today Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that Texas Children’s Hospital must create a “detransition clinic” and pay the state $10 million as the result of a legal settlement.
Trans young people’s access to health care has been targeted by the state for years. Paxton’s investigation into Texas Children’s Hospital began in 2023, the same year the the Texas Legislature passed SB 14, a law that banned health care for trans youth. But the landscape for this care shifted dramatically in 2021 when the state’s only clinic specializing in gender-affirming care for youth—GENECIS—shut down due to political pressure from state officials.
Every major medical association and leading world health authority supports health care for trans people, including youth. This care is evidence-based, best practice, and quite literally, life saving. It is crucial to understand that the number of people who have regrets about pursuing gender-affirming care and choose to detransition is vanishingly small.
Statement from Brad Pritchett, CEO of Equality Texas:
“Paxton is blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for. It ignores the actual science and years of data about the overwhelming benefits of gender-affirming care, and it completely disregards the huge number of trans people who owe their lives to the very care Paxton is opposing. It is embarrassing that a hospital once revered for its care has lost its integrity and put politics over patients.”
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Equality Texas is the largest statewide organization working to secure full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Texans through political action, education, community organizing, and collaboration.
