‘Completely devastating’: Parents of trans kids open up over Qld’s hormone therapy ban
Simone’s daughter was 12 when she came out as transgender to her family.
“She had been expressing herself as a female gender at school for some time before she came out to me,” Simone explains.
It wasn’t a shock: “I had suspected it for some time,” Simone says.
Protesters gathered outside Parliament House at a rally calling for the LNP to reinstate healthcare for trans youth in Brisbane on February 8.Credit: Courtney Kruk
The family paediatrician had suspected a change in gender identity too, having noticed the child presenting in increasingly feminine ways for a number of years.
“People often assumed she was my daughter whenever we were out anywhere,” Simone says. “Her coming out actually made things less complicated because I didn’t have to correct people all the time.
“It actually felt more natural and normal.”
The family discussed treatment options with the paediatrician before consulting their GP, who referred them to the Queensland Children’s Gender Service.
“This GP has known my daughter since she was a newborn and watched her grow up,” Simone says.
The start of puberty is a crucial window for young people seeking gender-affirming healthcare.
For stage one puberty blockers, medications that temporarily pause the development of physical characteristics from gonadotropin-releasing hormones in the body, to be most effective, they need to be taken before the onset of puberty.
But puberty blockers are politically controversial. In Queensland parliament on Thursday, Health Minister Tim Nicholls said policy changes in the UK last year demonstrated that hormone therapy was “contested medically across the world”, warranting closer scrutiny on their use as well as issues around parental consent.
For Simone, the two-year wait for treatment in the public sector compelled her to go private to help her daughter.
Had this not been possible, she says her daughter would have been severely impacted. “She was already experiencing changes, like dark hair on her upper lip, that were causing her distress,” Simone says.
The family also privately fund monthly sessions with a psychologist at the gender clinic, a requirement before progressing to stage two of gender-affirming treatment; feminising or masculinising hormone therapy.
“There’s a phenomenal amount of education that you have to go through with the doctors and psychologists to prove that you can give informed consent to start hormone therapy,” Simone says.
The Queensland Children’s Gender Service provides specialist care for trans and gender diverse children.Credit: Andy de Lore
Simone’s daughter turns 14 in a few months. Before the LNP government introduced a ban on hormone therapy treatment for children under 18 with gender dysphoria, they planned to commence a year of “intensive education” to prepare for the next stage of treatment.
Now they are not sure what their options will be.
“It’s so heartbreaking for the kids who have been on puberty blockers for the past three years and were about to commence hormone replacement therapy but have now been told they can’t,” Simone says.
Hannah’s daughter is one of those kids.
She started puberty blockers aged 10. Now aged 15, she was about to commence HRT to make permanent changes to her gender identity.
“Puberty blockers give children that time to make that decision,” Hannah says, adding that her daughter has been counselled by an array of medical professionals, including psychiatrists, endocrinologists and speech pathologists, to commence further treatment.
“She’s now very sure she’s female and has been able to express that consistently for five years to a medical professional team.”
Hannah says news of a possible three-year wait for HRT has been “completely devastating” for her daughter. “For a few days, she lost all hope.”
Protesters marched on Queensland parliament this month to call on the LNP to lift the ban on hormone therapy for trans kids.Credit: Courtney Kruk
The family has vowed to find a way to continue treatment but are disheartened by the LNP’s lack of detail for children under the care of the gender clinic.
“This announcement lacked so much nuance and information that we all needed – and the gender clinic needed,” Hannah says.
“The delay in getting puberty blockers will be devastating for a lot of young people. Partly because young people are impulsive and young people without hope will suicide.
“And right now, they feel they are without hope.”
Nicholls was asked during question time on Thursday whether he would lift the ban, following criticism from various health, legal and human rights groups.
He rejected the suggestion, telling Greens MP Michael Berkman: “The position of the Crisafulli government in relation to the delivery of gender services has been made abundantly clear.”
Former Labor industrial relations minister Grace Grace, herself a parent of a non-binary child, yelled across the chamber that Nicholls was speaking “rubbish”.
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