The subject line of the PBS email read: “How a trans youth care ban affects this family.” Inside was an essay based on a PBS News Hour segment on the travails of a transgender teen from Texas, after a new state law forbid “gender-affirming” medication that will somehow transform teenage girl Rhyan into a boy.
The plight of “transgender” teenagers in Texas are the new specialty subject of PBS’s White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez, who doesn’t seem to have much to do on that beat these days. Her fawning story on Wednesday was awful. The newsletter version, “compiled by Joshua Barajas,” was worse.
Growing restrictions on the rights of transgender Americans in states across the U.S. have forced many families with trans loved ones to make difficult decisions.
Forty-five bills focused on restricting rights for trans people -- across areas like education, health care and civil rights -- have passed statehouses so far this year, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, an independent research organization. Donald Trump and JD Vance, have pushed anti-trans rhetoric to extremes on the campaign trail.
PBS News Hour followed one family’s journey to access essential care, and explores what lies ahead for trans rights.
Like Barron-Lopez before him, Barajas relayed the tale like a sympathetic feature story, with no analysis of the science or ethics of teenage “transitioning” through hormone replacement therapy, which wasn't mentioned by name.
It was a big day for Rhyan.
With the help of a volunteer pilot, the 14-year-old and his mom, Mia, rode a small passenger plane to Albuquerque, New Mexico, more than 600 miles from home.
Rhyan made sure to pack his digital camera, snapping photos of the pretty sights thousands of feet in the air. Mountaintops jutting from the earth. Sheets of rain in the distance.
The two had been waiting for more than a year for a much-needed doctor’s appointment. Rhyan and Mia live in Texas, the largest of 26 U.S. states that have passed laws that restrict or ban gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.
Months before the state’s gender-affirming care ban went into effect last year, Rhyan’s doctor could no longer see him. The teen had to stretch out his testosterone prescription until the family could find a solution.
No, transgenders weren't being denied "medical care" by Republicans. There is no "medical" need for gender-denying treatments.
In recent years, the upswell of Republican-led efforts across the country to restrict medical care for transgender people has forced families with trans kids to seek treatments elsewhere.
PBS used junk science to further the transgender cause.
A first-of-its-kind study published this week in Nature found an increase in the number of suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth aged 13-17 living in states that have enacted at least one anti-trans law. In the 19 states included in the study, suicide attempts in this age group rose by anywhere from 7 to 72 percent in a single year.
Not mentioned: All researchers on the study were current or former members of the trans-activist group The Trevor Project, which works to help "transition" children, making this report emotional blackmail disguised as an objective study on teen suicide. The confident title of the study (“State-level anti-transgender laws increase past-year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary young people in the USA.”) is not supported by the results found, and the methodology of using personal surveys to collect its figures invites imprecision. Plus, as we know, correlation is not causation.
GOP lawmakers in several states have enacted a range of restrictions that affect trans, nonbinary and gender nonconforming people. The bills aim to block their participation in school sports, bathroom usage and access to certain health care services. The Supreme Court, is set to review Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban for trans youth.
Republicans are not trying to block “gender nonconforming” students from schools or bathrooms, but only demanding they acknowledge biological reality, and that biological boys don’t belong in girls’ sports or bathrooms.
It’s no surprise that in July 2024, PBS News won an Excellence in Transgender Coverage Award from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists (lucky they didn't run out of alphabet!).
