Pediatricians of Trans Youth Are Targets of Violence for Trying To Save Lives

Pediatricians who serve trans youth are increasingly the target of harassment and violence and more often than not their patients lives are also at stake. Navigating that is becoming untenable for many.

Time Magazine: Dr. Gina Sequeira first saw the protesters on a bright clear morning last September. A co-director of Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic who provides gender-affirming care to young people, Sequeira had confronted ignorance about her medical specialty in the past. But nothing had prepared her to see people outside her office, waving signs and handing out flyers warning of the “dangers” of the work she does.

“That was really, really hard for us as a clinic,” she says. “And I think it was really hard for the hospital’s patients and families who witnessed it.” Just a month later, protesters showed up again.

In 2021, the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign has calculated that, last year, conservative lawmakers introduced over 130 anti-trans bills into state legislatures—including 35 that explicitly limited the ability of trans and gender-expansive youth to access gender-affirming care, a term that refers to holistic psychological and medical care that affirms a person’s gender identity. As of Feb. 11, the ACLU has tracked similar bills in at least 17 state legislatures this year.

There are few of them in service already.

Even  research confirms the potentially life-saving nature of the work they do and the groups targeting them have gotten better at organizing and in addition to their own safety they worry such harassment campaigns could have a devastating impact on the ability of young people to access crucial medical care.

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