Republicans are quietly pushing to defund transgender healthcare even for adults

Hundreds of thousands of transgender people could lose access to medical treatment or be forced to detransition under a little-known Republican effort to defund trans healthcare for both adults and children.

Since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives last January, GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill have quietly added a wave of amendments to «must-pass» government funding bills that would ban federal money from being used for gender transition procedures such as hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery.

These riders vary widely in their scope and effect. Some target government health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Others would revoke insurance coverage for transgender government employees. Still others would bar federal funding for any institution that «promotes transgenderism».

Taken together, though, they would drastically curtail trans people’s access to medical care that advocates routinely describe as critical to their flourishing – much as the 1977 Hyde Amendment restricted abortion access in the wake of Roe v Wade.

«I remember a time when my own medical transition was the only thing going right in my life, and to have it taken away from me would have been existential at least,» says Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. «This healthcare saved my life and the lives of trans people I know and love.»

To be clear, GOP lawmakers aren’t seeking to limit these procedures for everyone. The proposed restrictions would only apply when they are done as part of a medical transition, and not when they are given to cisgender (or non-trans) people to treat other conditions.

And while such riders currently have little hope