Transgender youth and their families across the country have faced a deluge of legislative and political attacks, culminating with the U.S. Supreme Court okaying bans on their gender affirming healthcare last summer. But a new study out of VCU suggests the data used to make laws limiting such healthcare isn’t sound. Brad Kutner has this report.
Catherine Wall, a VCU psychology assistant professor, researched the science behind legislation that limits access to gender affirming care for youth, specifically the idea that many patients regret, or desist, and revert to their gender assigned at birth. And she noticed something.
“We don’t know necessarily know what the actual desistance rate is," Wall told Radio IQ. "We don’t claim to actually know this, but we do know the wide range of desistance rates is not a firm foundation for basing legislation on.”
In layman's terms, the data we have, according to Wall’s research, doesn’t show enough regret to be grounds for banning that healthcare.
One pediatric gender affirming care provider in Virginia - protect her from political and legal attacks- said she’s seen about 500 trans kids for treatment in her 10 years in the practice. She could only remember five who stopped treatment, but it wasn’t about regret.
“It’s a journey," the doctor said in a phone interview. "Some folks will go from trans to cis and back to trans. Or cis to trans masculine to nonbinary.”
The U.S. Supreme Court, in its opinion permitting state bans on trans healthcare for minors, pointed to concerns about long term side effects.
"Tennessee determined that administering puberty blockers or hormones to minors to treat gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or gender incongruence carries risks, including irreversible sterility, increased risk of disease and illness, and adverse psychological consequences," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in June 2025. "The legislature found that minors lack the maturity to fully understand these consequences, that many individuals have expressed regret for undergoing such treatments as minors, and that the full effects of such treatments may not yet be known."
But the anonymous doctor said the decision to start medication isn’t taken lightly.
“Months or years will go by before a family decides to start medication because parents are good parents and they want to make sure the risks don’t outweigh the benefits," she said.
Richmond resident Reed Williams began her medical gender transition at 13, though she said her family first recognized her as a transwoman and began talk therapy when she was a toddler. About a decade later, she’s grateful for the support - both medical and emotional - that made her the woman she is today.
“There are so many ways this healthcare changed my life for the better," Williams told Radio IQ. "And it is devastating to watch that be twisted to be more extreme or untested than it genuinely was.”
