The three pieces of context I want to bring together are:

1. This impacts a tiny percentage of young people in the US.

2. Despite that, the damange being done to these kids is very high, and could be life threatening for some.

3. The full threat is much larger. There's a potential for precedents that could fundamentally change the relationship Americans have with medical care and place governments run by Christian zealots in the middle of deciding what medical treatments are allowed.

So, first, on the tiny number of children impacted.

Reporting on gender affirming care for youth often stresses that it has increased dramatically in recent years.

This is true, but only relative to a time in recent memory when it was almost unheard of.

Trans people are rare. I don't like to give firm numbers where research gives a range, but <0.5 percent to 1.5 percent is the range we see in the research, and people who medically transition are a smaller number of those.

For Slate, I calculated the number of American teenagers who medically transition, and it was well shy of 0.5 percent.

In other words, the number of young people transitioning medically is far fewer than the percentage of people we expect to transition eventually in life.

https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/trans-youth-health-care-debate-affirmative-new-york-times-jamie-reed.html

This is because parents and doctors are, understandably, reluctant to recommend medical transition for minors, and only do it in cases where it is believed to be medically necessary. When the young person's distress is high and interfering with their life and bth the parents and doctors agree it's probably owing to gender dysphoria.

(sorry, my sister wants to get a friday afternoon beer, so I'm going to put a pin in this and come back)

I'm back! (Relaxation is great, but so is writing about trans stuff)

So, we know there aren't that many young people acessing medical transition. And our best guess is that the young people who are accessing transition are the ones whose parents and doctors feel most certain would benefit from it.

So, this brings us to the second point. Although laws against gender affirming care don't impact that many young people, the children they do impact are harmed very badly indeed.

Cisgender people sometimes have a tough time understanding gender dysphoria.

My favorite analogies are to a physical condition. Imagine you had a headache and were mocked and asked prove your head was hurting before you could have an ibuprofin. Imagine someone claimed that because they didn't need ibuprofin you shouldn't have it. Imagine people with debhilitating migraines were treated exactly the same way, with skepticism and dismissal, and no allowance for how disabled by the pain they were.

@e_urq @Toastie

I don’t have to *imagine* any of the above. I’ve had endometriosis.