Majority of LGBTQ adults feel safety threatened by gender-affirming care bans: poll

State laws that ban gender-affirming health care are making LGBTQ adults feel less safe, according to new polling from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a national LGBTQ rights group.

In a survey of more than 14,000 LGBTQ people in the U.S. older than 18, nearly 80 percent —including 94 percent of transgender and nonbinary respondents — said statewide bans on gender-affirming health care make them feel less safe as an LGBTQ person.

Another 81 percent of LGBTQ adults said health care bans are worsening harmful stereotypes, discrimination, hate and stigma against the LGBTQ community as a whole.

“When anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is introduced, it not only aims to legislate LGBTQ+ people out of all spaces of daily life, it also codifies discrimination and stigma into law,” the HRC said Thursday in its report.

Laws targeting gender-affirming health care were passed in 19 states this year, bringing the number of states that heavily restrict or ban such care to an unprecedented 22. While most laws prohibit the administration of puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries to transgender minors, some states, like Florida and Missouri, have enacted measures that restrict access to care for certain transgender adults, too.

Gender-affirming health care bans in at least four states — Alabama, Florida, Indiana and Oklahoma — have been either fully or partially blocked by court orders, according to the Movement Advancement Project. A federal judge in June permanently blocked Arkansas’s 2021 ban, ruling it unconstitutional.

In June, HRC issued a national state of emergency for LGBTQ people in the U.S. for the first time in its 40-year history, citing the passage of dozens of state laws targeting LGBTQ rights that have increased hostility toward the community and made it more difficult for LGBTQ people to go about their everyday lives.

In a Thursday statement, HRC President Kelley Robinson said the group’s most recent survey “reveals that the current climate of hostility and fear is only growing worse.”

“Extremist, anti-LGBTQ+ politicians and their allies are waging a dangerous and cruel misinformation campaign that seeks to stigmatize not only gender-affirming care but transgender and non-binary people as well,” Robinson said. “The rhetoric and misinformation is having a virtually universal impact on LGBTQ+ people, and further plunging us into a state of emergency that’s threatening the health and safety of every LGBTQ+ person.”

Many LGBTQ adults, according to the survey, are taking gender-affirming health care bans into account when determining where to live, work, travel and spend money, putting states with such bans in place at risk of losing valuable talent. 

One of Louisiana’s few doctors specializing in pediatric heart conditions this month said he plans to leave the state after Republican state lawmakers passed several bills intended to restrict the rights of LGBTQ people, including a gender-affirming health care ban.

Roughly 34 percent of LGBTQ adults in Thursday’s survey similarly said they would move — or have already taken steps to move — from a state that has passed a gender-affirming health care ban. More than half — 53 percent — of transgender and nonbinary adults said they would do the same.

Another 21 percent of LGBTQ adults, including 45 percent of transgender and nonbinary adults, said they would leave the country altogether if a gender-affirming health care ban was adopted by their home state or the federal government.

At least two bills introduced this year by Republicans in Congress seek to explicitly prohibit health care professionals from administering gender-affirming care to transgender young people, and another aims to bar program funding to children’s hospitals that offer such care to minors. Language targeting gender-affirming health care has been added to several additional bills, including most of the 12 government spending bills.

Most GOP presidential candidates have also pledged to enact a nationwide gender-affirming care ban if they are elected in 2024, including former President Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner.