As Nebraska’s new law restricting gender-affirming care for minors goes into effect this weekend, families with transgender children and the doctors who treat them are steeling themselves for change. But exactly what and how much change is anyone’s guess.
A key aspect of the law is a set of treatment guidelines that has yet to be created. Affected families, doctors and even lawmakers say they have largely gotten no response from health officials on when they can expect the new rules, which should lay out how and when transgender minors can be treated with puberty blockers and hormones.
Many of them fear Republican officials and their appointees in charge of administering the rules are slow-walking the regulations as a way to block treatment for new transgender patients under 19, the age of adulthood under Nebraska law.
I did the math for Alaska once and there was like ~250 trans youth in the entire state. So I'm sure the ~300 trans kids in Nebraska are indeed bracing for this, I'm just not sure the impact is going to be as big as proponents or detractors think.
”Only those minors who have shown “a long-lasting and intense pattern of gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria” would be allowed to start puberty blocking or hormone treatment, and only under a set of guidelines to be drafted by the state’s newly appointed chief medical officer, Dr. Timothy Tesmer.”
Sounds fairly reasonable to me. We are not the smartest as teens nor do we have the capacity to make life lasting decisions. In my opinion minors should be treated as minors.
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