As I keep saying, the anti-trans terfs all have to admit that the major medical organizations say affirming a trans child / person’s gender identity is the best medical practice possible. That includes social transitioning along with mental and medical care continuing as best to meet the needs of the person who is identifying as a different gender than assigned at birth. How in hell do you expect people to look at a baby and know what that baby is going to develop as it’s sense of its own gender as it grows up? Only the growing child can possibly know how they identify. Until all the anti-trans people get the combined medical expertise of the AMA and the American Academy of Pediatrics then accept their guidance of the best medical practices, which again is to affirm the gender identity claimed by the person no matter their age. Hugs
He said the AMA “simply will not stand” for the bans and will use “every avenue available” to oppose them.
By Daniel Villarreal Sunday, May 14, 2023
Jesse Ehrenfeld the soon-to-be president of the AMAPhoto: YouTube screenshot
Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld is a U.S. Navy combat veteran who will be inaugurated as the American Medical Association’s (AMA) first out gay president on June 13 – and he says the organization “simply will not stand” for legislation targeting abortion and gender-affirming care. He has pledged to use “every avenue available” to oppose such laws.
“We see the attack on reproductive care, reproductive access, and transgender healthcare as a continuum of government overreach into patient-physician decision making,” Ehrenfeld told The Washington Blade. The AMA, whose mission is to advocate “the art and science of medicine [for] the betterment of public health,” represents at least 271,660 members, including physicians and medical students.
“We simply will not stand for the government coming in to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship [by passing bills that] outlaw what we know to be appropriate, evidence-based clinical guidelines-based care,” Ehrenfeld said.
The AMA has long advocated for progressive and LGBTQ+-inclusive medical practices, including the removal of sex as a legal designation on birth certificates, a ban on conversion therapy, a ban on requiring surgeries for gender marker changes on government-issued identification documents, and changes to the Food and Drug Administration’s prohibitions on blood donations from men who have sex with men. The group’s journal has also noted how healthcare disparities disproportionately affect transgender people.
But Ehrenfeld said his inauguration marks an “important moment” in the AMA’s history as it signals increased LGBTQ+ visibility in a field that wasn’t always open to queer professionals or queer patients’ needs. Ehrenfeld and his husband will be marching with an AMA group in Chicago’s Pride parade, a first for the group that seems particularly significant considering the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being introduced nationwide.
“We have a lot of backseat drivers trying to tell doctors what to do,” Ehrenfeld said of bans on gender-affirming care for minors that have been passed in 18 states and introduced in 13 other states. He said these “backseat drivers” include “insurance companies who put up barriers around prior authorization for getting approval for care and services.”
The AMA has said that gender-affirming care is safe and essential to the overall well-being of trans youth. However, laws that criminalize gender-affirming care — charging doctors with felonies and revoking their medical licenses for rendering such care — cause “moral injury” to physicians, Ehrenfeld added, putting medical professionals in “an untenable choice: provide the care that they know is in the patient’s best interests, or break the law and [potentially] go to jail.”
“That stress is real,” Ehrenfeld said. “There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t hear from a colleague who says I can’t take it anymore.”
Additionally, Ehrenfeld said that the AMA has noticed a drop in healthcare workers applying for jobs in states passing such legislation. The lack of workers could eventually risk the lives of every potential patient in those states, regardless of their feelings on trans care for minors.
Ehrenfeld noted that a lot of his professional work has included improving healthcare access for LGBTQ+ people. He pledged that the AMA will use “every avenue available” to oppose such legislation, including encouraging the National Governors Association to file lawsuits and amicus briefs against bans on gender-affirming care as well as working with other stakeholders to influence state and federal policies in governmental and private sectors.
Ehrenfeld directs a philanthropic organization called Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment and has previously taught at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization’s Digital Health Technical Advisory Group and as a special adviser to President Donald Trump’s (R) U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams.
While serving as Adams’ adviser in 2019, he testified to the U.S. House Armed Services Committee against Trump’s ban on trans military members. Ehrenfeld told the committee that he found “no medically valid reason — including a diagnosis of gender dysphoria — to exclude transgender individuals from military service.”
That, my friends, is the mark of a true fan: it isn’t the fact that the product is the best in quality, best in performance, best in taste, it’s the fact that a fan is a fan for no better reason than he has chosen to be a fan. Thereby lives a love of heartbreak, ridicule, and a test of loyalty sufficient to scar any soul forever. I of course come from much better stock: I am a fan of the Chicago Bears. Da Bears! If you’ve not solved this puzzle by now, this is not about the Lions. Don’t get me wrong, they will forever disappoint – Sorry Uncle Bob – but this post regards how a beer company has received backlash for sending beer to someone who is an internet influencer. Now, there are few things in this world that I purposely choose not to pay attention to, and among those are the Lions and things that republicans and rednecks have chosen to cancel in their anti-cancel-culture rants. Yes, that’s confusing. It makes more sense if you drink a lot of low-quality beer and believe what Tucker Calson tells you.
lifetime commitment with their Bud Light beer that has weathered two marriages, four kids, eight teeth and 29-stories that start with “dude, hold my beer…” will be drinking again like nothing happened. In time they will forget why they were mad at a beer – because let’s face it, who gets mad at beer? And, those of us watching from the sidelines, even as reluctantly as I, will remember that this was never about the beer, never about the internet influencer, but was ultimately about the homo- and the trans-phobic prejudice and hate that was so easily stirred to cause the easily led to put down their favorite beer.
Who are they to not only disparage the character of that person, but to speak as if a beer company deserves to be shot for treating a person as a living and worthwhile person? Each of us in America is born with the freedom to voice our opinion. It bothers me that so many have chosen to use this freedom to be so manipulated as to only be able to speak hate and so weak as to give up a beer they appear to love for the affront of giving another citizen simple respect. What are they truly angry or afraid of?
