New study debunks right-wing claims about trans kids in the US: ‘I hope our paper cools heads’

New research has shown that fewer than one in 1,000 US adolescents with commercial insurance receives gender-affirming medication, despite increasingly hysterical right wing claims to the contrary.

Published in Jama Pediatrics on Monday (6 January), the figures revealed just how few adolescents with commercial insurance received gender-affirming medication, including puberty blockers and hormones, during a five-year period. 

The researchers analysed an insurance claims database that covered more than five million patients aged eight to 17 across all 50 states. And they discovered that only 926 adolescents with a gender-related diagnosis received puberty blockers between 2018 and 2022. 

The figures didn’t include youngsters covered by Medicaid, the federal health insurance programme for people on low incomes. 

“We are not seeing inappropriate use of this sort of care”

During that same period, 1,927 of them received hormones, suggesting that not even 0.1 per cent of all youth in the database received the medicine. 

The researchers also found that no patients under the age of 12 were prescribed gender-affirming medication.

In September 2024, at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, Trump repeated false claims that children are undergoing transgender surgery during the school day. “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?”  

Lead author Landon Hughes, a Harvard University public-health researcher, said: “We are not seeing inappropriate use of this sort of care and it’s certainly not happening at the rate at which people often think it is. I hope our paper cools heads on this issue and ensures that the public is getting a true sense of the number of people accessing this care.” 

The study comes as at least 26 states have adopted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for minors.

Following the election of Donald Trump, who has promised to roll back protections for transgender people, and limit gender-affirming care, the families of several trans children appealed to the Supreme Court to strike down a ban on such care in Tennessee.

Those arguing against the ban claimed it was unlawful sex discrimination and a violation of the constitutional rights of vulnerable Americans. The justices are expected to hand down a decision on United States v. Skrmetti by the end of June.

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