The Study Republicans Demanded About Trans Kids Just Backfired. Guess What the Media Isn't Covering?

Utah commissioned actual experts to review the science on gender-affirming care. The results? Inconvenient truths that don't fit the narrative.

In 2023, Utah Republicans rushed through a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, arguing they needed time to examine the science. Utah's gender-affirming care ban was debated, passed, signed by the governor and took effect within days of the 2023 legislative session's commencement, as lawmakers claimed they were just being cautious, wanting to protect kids by waiting for better evidence.

Well, the evidence is in. And it's not what they wanted to hear.

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Last week, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services quietly released a more than 1,000-page report, conducted by the University of Utah's Drug Regimen Review Center that completely undermines the justification for the state's ban. The review found that youth who received care before age 18 had better outcomes, especially around depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Hormonal treatments were associated with positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes.

This wasn't some activist report or biased study designed to reach a predetermined conclusion. Unlike the heavily criticized Cass Review from the UK or the Trump administration's recent anonymous hit job disguised as an HHS report, this was conducted by Utah's Drug Regimen Review Center — a little-known body operating out of the University of Utah that has spent over 20 years evaluating prescription drugs for the state's Medicaid program. These aren't people with a political agenda; they're pharmacological researchers who crunch numbers for a living.

And their findings were unequivocal: "The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data on the use of GAHT in pediatric patients with GD. However, results from our exhaustive literature searches have led us to the opposite conclusion."

The researchers analyzed 277 studies that included data on over 28,000 young people with gender dysphoria. They found that "there is virtually no regret associated with receiving the treatments, even in the very small percentages of patients who ultimately discontinued them". Most importantly, "Patients that were seen at the gender clinic before the age of 18 had a lower risk of suicide compared to those referred as an adult".