LGBTQ Youth
The Harm of Banning Care for Trans Youth
This letter to the editor, penned by MAP’s Kellan Baker, appeared in the New York Times in response to a February 2026 guest essay by Jesse Singal.
To the Editor:
This essay by Jesse Singal focuses on “uncertainty” in health care for transgender youth. So let’s look at what is certain:
Transgender adults exist — and they were once children. Some transgender people benefit from appropriate medical care. The question clinicians face is not if any care should be provided at all, but exactly what care is best for each specific patient.
As in any area of medicine, doctors use the best available evidence to navigate careful, individualized decision making with transgender patients and their families. The opposite of this cautious, tailored approach is the enforcement of numerous outright bans on medical care for all transgender youth across the United States.
No evidence review on youth gender care concludes that categorical prohibitions of this care are appropriate, and no medical or mental health association condones them either. Leaders in evidence-based medicine call bans an “egregious and unconscionable” mistake in handling evidentiary uncertainty in medical care.
Careful, considered standards for the provision of medical care to youth who need it aren’t out of step with what the evidence supports — but bans that substitute politicians for parents and doctors certainly are.
Kellan Baker
Baltimore
Kellan Baker is a health services researcher and a senior adviser for health policy at the Movement Advancement Project, an independent nonprofit think tank.
