Montana families with transgender children are quickly losing access to care. A Missoula hospital Wednesday announced it would stop offering gender-affirming care to minors. It is the latest hospital system to stop offering that service.
Community Medical Center in a statement cited state and federal policy changes. It said it would help minor transgender patients find other providers, but it may be hard to find that care
Atty Moriarty is the president of the Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She says Billings Clinic and Logan Health also recently stopped offering gender-affirming care for minors.
“There has been an environment that I think that has scared hospital systems. And so, we have seen a big decrease in care across the state.”
She says some of the problem lies in providers leaving the state. But also, threatening letters from the Trump Administration asking hospitals to adopt standards it laid out in a report earlier this year.
That report called for more use of therapy rather than other options like puberty blockers, which it said were experimental. Experts criticized the report and said it doesn’t align with the widely accepted standard of care.
Even though it’s still legal to provide gender-affirming care to Montana kids, the Trump Administration’s actions are having a chilling effect, says Alex Rate, legal director of the ACLU of Montana.
“We are seeing a situation where there is heavy anti-transgender sentiment that is causing providers to adopt a defensive crouch," Rate says. "That’s truly unfortunate, because individuals need access to this care, which is safe and effective.”
Families will struggle to find providers.
“The most basic way to say it is that patients are not going to receive care,” Moriarity says.
She says that can have real consequences. Studies show that a large majority of transgender kids have thought about suicide and nearly have attempted.
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