Gender-Affirming Care for Youth is a Necessity
To our community:
We must acknowledge the incredibly difficult impact of the recent announcement of changes to Fenway Health’s care for transgender and nonbinary youth under the age of 19. At a minimum, the way in which Fenway communicated these changes was irresponsible and in no way considered the impact it would have on our community, other healthcare providers, and our movement for transgender lives and freedom.
Our staff have been in communication with leadership and staff at Fenway Health to better understand the situation. Fenway has made the decision to no longer write prescriptions for puberty blockers and hormone therapy as a gender-affirming treatment due to a possible risk of losing federal funding. There are no other changes to gender-affirming care for transgender youth at Fenway, and there are no changes to gender-affirming care access for people ages 19 and above. Finally, we want to reiterate that there have been no actual changes to federal law regarding access to gender-affirming healthcare that have led to these changes at Fenway. Gender-affirming healthcare is still legal, and we will continue fighting for it to remain so.
We have also engaged in discussion with Fenway to support them in addressing the absence of community perspectives in this decision and their poor communication. Please know that we will do our best to advocate for all trans and nonbinary people with Fenway Health to try and help them do better in the future.
This is the time to stand steadfastly against the Trump administration’s illegal threats to transgender healthcare. To see the self-appointed leader in transgender healthcare in New England back down so quickly from their commitments to our community is incredibly disheartening. It is further disappointing to witness their lack of innovation in finding new ways of continuing to provide full access to medical care for trans young people.
MTPC stands for each and every transgender and nonbinary Bay Stater and American. We will follow in the footsteps and words of our movement’s dearly departed mother, Miss Major: “They want us to live in the 1950s. No. Get off our fucking backs and let us live. They try to push us back – well, that means we gotta put the gloves on and fight again…I know the world I would like to live in. It’s in my head, but I try my best to live it now.”
If you have questions about losing access to care at Fenway or another New England healthcare center, we encourage you to discuss these changes directly with your care providers and also reach out to GLAD Law’s free and confidential legal information line: www.GLADLawAnswers.org.
