If the NHS won’t protect trans children, we will

This week’s decision by NHS England, Wes Streeting’s successor as Health Secretary James Murray, and the local NHS Trust, to withdraw healthcare from trans patients at Brighton WellBN will have extremely harmful effects, possibly the most harmful imaginable, for patients. Their attempt to forcibly detransition young trans people is a moment of deep national shame.

As every abortion campaigner will tell you, withdrawing legal abortions doesn’t stop abortions, it just makes abortions less safe. And those whose concern is not women’s well-being, but their personal ideological crusade against women’s bodily autonomy, act anyway.

Similarly, the 2020 NHS decision to withdraw trans healthcare on the NHS hasn’t removed trans children’s need for that healthcare, it has just made accessing it more dangerous. And it has also correlated with an explosion in the suicides of young trans people.

Since then, wealthier families have accessed gender affirming drugs from regulated private prescribers abroad. The children of less wealthy families buy them – or are given them – on the black market. Neither of these is as good as the healthcare a genuine national health service – rather than an anti-trans ideological crusade – would provide. But it is where trans patients are.

We can’t stop the ideological crusade – with its consequential danger for vulnerable children. But we can do something to mitigate that danger. 

Good Law Project will fund access to gender affirming private healthcare for at least ten trans minor patients of WellBN whose treatment has been withdrawn and whose financial need is greatest for three years or until those children turn 18 (whichever is the sooner). The triaging will be done on our behalf by Anne Health who you can email on support@anne.health. 

If you’d like to help us fund more healthcare, please donate. We will hypothecate all donations to trans healthcare for minors.