Liam Conner
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is taking a more conservative stance on gender-affirming care, although he says it will not be a central issue in his campaign.
“It’s abortion, it’s the border, it’s trans rights. All of these issues are important,” he said at a rally in Austin last week. “None of them are the issues that really matter to you, to me, to our children.”
Kennedy recently called gender-affirming care a “non-existential” issue but has weighed in on the issue, supporting a ban on certain treatments, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors. His running mate, Nicole Shanahan, agrees.
Shanahan, a former California lawyer, appeared on a podcast hosted by Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who opposes allowing trans athletes to compete in women’s sports, and said medical professionals were being reckless with lockdown prescriptions. of puberty.
“We’ve all been there,” Shanahan said in “Gaines for Girls,” downplaying the impact of gender dysphoria experienced by some children as just the “awkward years” that are part of any adolescence.
Last Saturday, Shanahan supported Kennedy’s position, posting on X“Just to be clear: you can support LGBTQ causes AND ALSO I believe children are too young to be able to consent to puberty blockers.”
While Kennedy said he sympathizes with those who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, he also said he has recently become “concerned” about the idea of giving puberty blockers to minors, labeling them “castration drugs.” He also referred to sex change procedures as “surgical mutilation” and said such treatments should be delayed until adulthood.
“Minors cannot drive, vote, join the military, get tattoos, smoke or drink, because we know that children do not fully understand the consequences of decisions that have lifelong ramifications,” he wrote in X earlier this month.
In the past, Kennedy has spread misinformation related to LGBTQ issues, including conspiracies that chemicals present in the environment can make children homosexual or transsexual, which is not based on scientific research.
Chemicals, he said in a 2022 episode of his podcast, “are raining down on our children” and “will disrupt normal sexual development and neurological development.”
The Kennedy campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Many medical experts at leading institutions consider gender-affirming care to be a medical necessity, which can be extremely difficult to access due to bans enacted by some states. Currently, there are bans in 23 states, making comprehensive care limited and available mainly in large metropolitan areas, leading to long wait times for those seeking specialized care.
Once seen, experts say, the decision-making process for any treatment or procedure typically involves multiple visits and consultations with medical and mental health specialists, as well as parents or guardians. As for gender-affirming surgeries for minors, experts say these procedures are extremely rare and are largely viewed as procedures for adults.
Meredith McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine who specializes in care for adolescents, only about 3% of young people who suffer from gender dysphoria are prescribed puberty blockers. And there is no evidence to suggest that this treatment causes lasting or irreversible harm to a minor’s physical or cognitive development.
But when transgender and gender diverse youth don’t have access to essential health care, their health and well-being are harmed and families are destabilized, she said.
“So this candidate assumes that young people can wait until age 18, but that would mean going an inordinately long period of time without evidence-based treatment,” McNamara said. “I can’t think of a good reason for that.”
