During the last legislative session, Minnesota declared itself a "trans refuge" state, inviting children from around the country to travel to the state to get "gender-affirming care" here if they were no longer able to get treatment to medically transition in their home state.
The law was specifically targeted to get children to come to Minnesota for treatments including hormones and surgery.
Does the law "allows the state to intervene and sever parental custody?"
— Clarity (@covid_clarity) March 24, 2023
Yes. As shown below, the law creates a special state emergency power to intervene between a child and legal guardian if the child is seeking and unable to obtain "gender-affirming health care." pic.twitter.com/WTVtfx51ww
Minnesota Democrats placed this law near the top of their legislative agenda, and were over the moon when they managed to get the bill passed.
Minnesota passes the Trans Refuge bill!
— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) April 23, 2023
Incredible. It allows parents to know their trans kids won't get taken out of the state to be detransitioned, it will prevent other states from subpoenaing gender care in Minnesota.
Congratulations Minnesota.pic.twitter.com/t2IJxH3ZDL
There was no question in anybody's mind that this would result in a substantial expansion of the client base for clinics and doctors that provide this care. That was the whole point--to bring children here to get the care "they need."
Regardless of what you think of the morality of what they did--this law would allow adults to violate court orders and custody rights established in other states--it was not just predictable but also the entire point was to dramatically expand the patient pool in the state.
Well, it happened, and in a big way.
'Trans refuge' law draws some to Minnesota, and providers are struggling to meet the demand https://t.co/V8pX4ALmmj
— Transgender World (@jackmolay) February 16, 2024
No one knew exactly what to expect after lawmakers passed a proposal last year making Minnesota a refuge for those seeking gender-affirming care.
"Is it going to be five people moving here, or is it going to be hundreds?" said Aaron Zimmerman, executive director of the LGBTQ nonprofit PFund Foundation. "It's a huge lift to pick up your life and move, the cost of it alone."
In a span of six months after the law passed, more than 150 people have said they're planning to move to Minnesota alone or with their families from states as far away as Texas, Tennessee and Florida, according to an online survey put together by LGBTQ groups in the state. People who reached out for help were directed to the survey, though groups think the number of families moving is higher. The influx is prompting legislation this session seeking funding to help people relocate here.
"Minnesota really is an island unto itself," said Zimmerman, whose nonprofit worked with Twin Cities Pride and the Minnesota Trans and Intersex Resource Network to create the survey. "Minnesota has a reputation and long history of protecting LGBTQ people. That reputation is the crux of this."
They're coming from some of the more than 20 states that have enacted policies that ban or restrict gender-affirming care for minors. Nearly 90% of respondents said they are moving in order to get that care in Minnesota, creating a crunch for providers, who were already struggling to meet demand and trying to chip away at waitlists of a year or longer.
Now, put this fact in the context of what Dr. Laungani, a leading transgender surgeon, has said about the quality of care provided by the current crop of doctors providing "gender-affirming care" at this time. He specifically pointed to the fact that the need for care has exploded and that doctors without experience have been flocking to provide substandard care.
On Surgeon Training:
— Meg Brock (@MegEBrock) February 15, 2024
"We’ve seen a growing number of programs throughout the world of gender affirmation, probably with a lack of training and not proper training, for now,” said Laungani. “And so, you know, better ca–any care was better, probably, than no care." pic.twitter.com/Af48vrRJck
Specifically, his characterization of the current state of transgender care was:
“We’ve seen a growing number of programs throughout the world of gender affirmation, probably with a lack of training and not proper training, for now,” said Laungani. “And so, you know, better ca–any care was better, probably, than no care. So, it did allow individuals to have access to surgery. But it’s time just to make sure that we have the right training and that everybody has the same standard because the patients deserve it.
“And, so, we need to make sure that, you know, we’ll build these training programs, fellowships, and things,” he said. “And it’s really happening now. So, this is going to be something mandatory.”
As the Star Tribune reported, transgender clinics in Minnesota were already strained by the expansion of demand within the state. The transgender sanctuary state law increased the demand dramatically.
Family Tree Clinic in Minneapolis has been offering hormone treatments for nearly a decade and now sees about 3,000 patients a year for 7,000 appointments. Those numbers are rising.
Last year, the clinic saw 225 patients from out of state, many of them pediatric patients from Iowa or other bordering states, as well as places such as Texas, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana and Kansas.
As I wrote earlier today, transgender care is being provided by amateurs, not experts, who really aren't qualified to provide extremely dangerous and, in many cases, experimental care.
Dilation after surgery:
— Meg Brock (@MegEBrock) February 15, 2024
“We start dilating because there will be a tendency from the body to want to contract and close that, considered as a wound sort of. So, you’ll have to fight that contraction and then dilate quite a bit at first." pic.twitter.com/RTPBT4cqHS
Whatever you think about the necessity of providing "gender-affirming care" to children--I think doing so is immoral and damaging--I am sure we can all agree that life-altering care that can have devastating long-term impacts on a patient's health should not be done by doctors without sufficient training.
That is what is happening. And Minnesota lawmakers passed a law that took none of this into account despite claiming that it was vital to bring patients to Minnesota as quickly as possible.
This has never been about the good of the patients. They never appear to have considered the impact on the quality of care provided to the children being drawn here.
You can decide for yourself what you think this is really all about.
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