Protecting Trans Youth From Abuse is Anathema to the Right Wing Press
As Washington state seeks to improve services for youth who run away, conservatives deny the conditions that create such desperation and double down on parental ownership and control.
by Evan Urquhart
A bill in Washington state that seeks to protect runaways seeking reproductive or gender-affirming healthcare is outraging the right wing press. Under the current law, shelters for runaways in WA must notify a child’s parents when a young person comes into their care. The law as it stands now makes an exception if the child shows signs of parental abuse or neglect. The proposed change would create another exception, specifically for young people who show up at runaway homes and are seeking to access reproductive healthcare or gender-affirming care.
Children who run away are extremely vulnerable, and fleeing abuse is the main reason they do so. Shelters that work directly with runaways are one small part of a process to find services and stable living situations for these youth, and in most cases the goal will be to safely return the child to their parents. Medical interventions like puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and especially surgery take a lot of time and evaluation, but the umbrella of gender-affirming care includes social and cosmetic changes like getting a haircut or using a different name or pronoun, the sorts of things that could reasonably happen during a short-term shelter stay. An essay defending the proposed change to the law in the Seattle Times made just this point:
screenshot from the Seattle Times
Coverage in the right wing press has ignored the medical necessity of gender-affirming care, which has been shown to improve outcomes for young people and adults alike. Instead, it focuses on the rights of parents to control their childrens’ lives. This is part of the larger parents’ rights movement, which aims to undermine child welfare protections and is funded by ideological opponents to public schools.
screenshot from the New York Post
Ultimately, measures to protect transgender youth from non-affirming parents will only ever be half-measures. Children run away because they feel they have no other options, and the alternatives within the child welfare system are woefully underfunded and inadequate to the task of meeting their needs for safety, stability, and the presents of caring adults. Measures like the one in Washington state are good, as far as they go, but the importance of educating parents and helping them work through their concerns and support their children remains paramount.