Over 400 anti-trans bills have been introduced or carried over from 2022 with 24 passed and/or headed to Governors’ desks in 13 states, attacking the basic health care of the transgender community. On May 4, Plume sponsored an event with the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) to help our community understand how these bills might affect our rights.
Our panelists included Plume’s co-founder, Dr. Jerrica Kirkley (she/her), organizers Devon Ojeda (they/he) and Sybastian Smith (he/him) from NCTE, and moderator Lana Patel (she/her). Their conversation discussed the impacts of these anti-trans policies, how we are addressing these harms, and ways we can provide resources and care to our community. An audience Q&A section at the end of the session offered the 500+ attendees an opportunity to ask questions and share resources.
Watch the recording of the event to learn about anti-trans legislation and your rights and hear about how Plume is working to support our community!
Dr. Jerrica: Plume is a rare healthcare provider where, as a virtual clinic, we provide telehealth services to the transgender and gender non-conforming community in 45 states right now. Our goal is to do that as far and widely as possible, across the country. Because of that, there are multiple different regulatory landscapes that we’re having to deal with, just by providing healthcare in a telehealth setting. On top of that, we’re all facing legislation that’s coming through to limit access to healthcare.
We saw that legislation’s impact in a big way, with the DEA’s policies and the Ryan Haight Act and how they affect the virtual prescribing of testosterone—which as we know, is really important for a lot of trans and gender non-conforming folks. These rules had an impact on how we can provide T on a state-by-state basis, but also on a federal level. That is in play as we speak.
Acknowledging that medication access and telehealth is super important for care. We put a lot of energy and a lot of resources into catalyzing support from the community—everybody from the folks at Plume as individuals, to our community members and patients, other healthcare providers, policymakers, legislators, Congress, everyone. We mobilized folks to get the message out that we really need to make sure that access to testosterone is protected for the trans community. Now, we’re seeing some of the results of that play out with the extension of the DEA’s prescribing rules for T.
The landscape is changing rapidly. We’re looking at over 500 anti-trans bills, you know, and a small percentage of those are getting signed. They’re affecting care in different ways. There’s never going to be one answer in terms of questions like, “How does this affect my prescription or my ability to see a provider?” That answer is going to vary pretty widely, depending on where you live and your personal situation.
To the extent that we’re able to legally provide care, Plume will make sure that we’re doing that where we can. As our speakers mentioned, you know, before these new laws or rules go into play, it does give us a little bit of a window to provide access to care. A lot of healthcare providers are doing what we saw Planned Parenthood do with their local clinics. An example of that is how we opened our doors to provide free care to as many Missourians as possible before, what initially was a cutoff date of April 27. There are things that we can do as a healthcare provider community to at least give some cushion in a very imperfect world and provide some safety to bridge folks to care wherever that might be.
We can all be active on this, whether it’s actually seeing patients and providing healthcare and prescriptions, or getting the message out that these restrictions are not right. This is life saving care, this is necessary care. We can respond as healthcare providers in this crisis.
