Ohio set to restrict trans care for adults
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced proposals this month that transgender advocates say could block access to gender-affirming care provided by independent clinics and general practitioners, leaving thousands of adults scrambling for treatment and facing health risks.
Ashton Colby, 31, fears the clinic where he gets the testosterone he has taken since age 19 would no longer offer it. The transgender Columbus man believes he could eventually be treated by another provider that would meet the new requirements. But even a few months’ wait could leave Colby experiencing a menstrual cycle for the first time in many years.
“My mental health has been stressed,” Colby said. “These are feelings related to being transgender that I have not felt in years, but now, I’m thrown into feeling devastated about my experience as a transgender person.”
DeWine announced the proposed rules amid a whirl of activity that could push Ohio further than most other states in controlling gender-affirming care and make it just the second to set forth restrictions on adult care.
He also signed an executive order to ban gender-affirming surgery for minors but vetoed a bill that would ban all gender-affirming care for minors. One chamber of the state legislature has already overridden it, and the other is voting Jan. 24 on whether to do so.
“It is a policy project that attempts to make it so onerous, so restrictive to get care, that people are functionally unable to do so,” said Kellan Baker, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Institute, a Washington-based organization focused on the health of LGBTQ+ people.
The policies focused on care for adults come in a draft of administrative rules released this month by the Ohio Department of Health and the state’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
They would require psychiatrists, endocrinologists and medical ethicists to have roles in creating facility-wide gender-affirming care plans for patients of all ages. Patients under 21 would have to receive at least six months of mental health counseling before starting gender-affirming medication or surgery. Providers would be barred from referring minors to treatment elsewhere, such as clinics in other states.
When he announced the measures, DeWine said they would ensure safe treatment and make it impossible to operate “fly-bynight” clinics.
The rules are not intended to stop treatment for those already receiving it and are in line with the way specialized care is generally practiced, even if the approach isn’t always state-mandated, said DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney, who noted the administration is open to wording changes to clarify the rules.
Still, advocates say those rules go beyond the standard of care established by organizations including the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and say that, at any rate, there are no sketchy gender clinics in the state.
“It’s bad and unnecessary bureaucracy, and we know what they’re trying to do — and they’re hoping to cut off health care for as many people as possible,” said Dara Adkison, board secretary for the advocacy group TransOhio. “It’s not subtle.”
Mimi Rivard, a nurse practitioner and clinical director at Central Outreach Wellness Center Ohio’s Columbus clinic, said clinics already successfully prescribe hormones without the involvement of endocrinologists, and there aren’t enough of those specialists in the state to do the current work, in addition to serving the estimated 60,000 Ohioans that are reported to have transgender experience.
Many transgender patients are wary of other medical settings, which they might see as unfriendly, for more routine needs like hypertension or diabetes, but clinics like hers also treat them for those conditions, she said.
“We have to behave in ways that are consistent with the oaths we’ve taken as caregivers,” Rivard said. “And these guidelines will not allow for this.”