Last Thursday Missouri had a public hearing regarding House Bill 2649. HB 2649 regards gender transition in the state of Missouri . This bill essentially makes it illegal to offer any treatments towards gender dysphoria (the medical diagnosis for being transgender) for ages under 18 years old. In last Thursday’s hearing Missouri law makers wanted to change the age concerning the bill from 18 years old to 25 years old.

Many critiques of the bill agree that  seriously harm the genderqueer population. Statistics from Pubmed show that 82% of the genderqueer community have seriously considered  suicide, and  40% of the community have attempted suicide. A set of statistics from TrevorProject shows that that receiving HRT (hormone replacement therapy) lowered the rate of depression and a past year suicide attempt by 40%. That means that the receiving HRT lowers suicide rate amongst the community to 24%.

Statistics from TrevorProject show that nearly 80% of people receiving HRT had at least one supportive parent. This means that the state doesn’t need to limit it as the parents are in control. If parents do not want their child on HRT the child cannot go on HRT. It’s as simple as that.

Missouri lawmakers point towards the brain not fully maturing until the age of 25 as the reason they want to extend the ban on HRT. This doesn’t make sense for a few reasons, but the main one is that this includes hormone blockers. For those of you who don’t know, hormone blockers simply suppress puberty. They do not have a negative effect on an individual in any way, what hormone blockers do, do is pause the onset of puberty. Blockers are fully reversible as they do not alter anything, and as soon as you stop taking the blockers, your puberty will just start where it left off. There are a few known minor side affects of blockers, which are rare.

HB 2649 is not the only bill in Missouri that seriously harms the genderqueer community.

I urge all of you reading this to help save lives, and sign the petition here to be a hero, and help change the world for the better.