In an open letter, health professionals from all over the state are pleading with the Alberta government to change its stance on restricting gender-affirming health care.
Dr. Kate Greenaway, the clinical director of Calgary’s Foria Clinic, is leading the initiative.
In her open letter to the state, she immediately received 48 more names, pleading with the Minister of Health to take medical advice more than social tips on what she is referring to as profoundly personal matters.
She explained that the Alberta government’s plan “truly violates global recommendations as well as those from the Canadian Pediatric Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics on how we should be managing gender-affirming treatment in children.”
According to Greenaway, the 17 medics and 31 nurses who have signed her open letter share her worry that the attention is being diverted away from the patients themselves. She also thinks that informed choices should be made based on medical data and professional judgment.
She remarked, “This to me is a step in the completely wrong way.” In a society where trans people now face numerous obstacles to self-acceptance, being accepted by their communities, and accessing care, it does foster fear of them as well as an attitude where it is acceptable to discriminate against them.”
Kim Large, the mother of a transgender child from Medicine Hat, asserts that the issue shouldn’t even be up for discussion.
She claims that her family was placed in the care of a team of health professionals and went through an extensive and drawn-out process.
“You are assigned to a physician, an endocrinologist, nurse, and psychologist,” she said. “You frequently meet with them.
These are trained professionals and doctors with specific training in this area.”
Large claims that there is too much false information available and that people are being misled into thinking that doctors are assisting minors in undergoing long-term physical changes.
Adolescents are not allowed to undergo surgery until they are 18 years old. She claimed that people are being led to believe that children are experiencing lasting changes when in reality they are not. “Up until age 18, it’s puberty blockers and hormones, and those are fully reversible and the side effects are like baby manage,” which many people with uteruses—including myself—take and took for many years without considering the effects.”
Working with non-binary and cis people is, in general, reaffirming and not a medical treatment, according to Greenaway.
“Providing people a place to be authentic and share their experiences and journeys with us—much of which is actually more conversational and interpersonal than intervention,” she said.
Adolescents are not allowed to undergo surgery until they are 18 years of age. Contrary to popular belief, babies are not experiencing continuous changes.
