Gov. Walz's trans care policy in Minnesota could prove a liability for the Dem ticket

While Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has been subjected to a barrage of largely spurious Republican attacks, his record as a progressive governor does deserve scrutiny — including his strong commitment to gender-transition health care for minors. While Democrats frame the issue as one of civil rights and protection for kids, Republicans argue that underage access to such services endangers vulnerable children.

The reality is extremely complicated and still poorly understood. It is an issue where both parties need to tread carefully.

The state law signed by Walz in April 2023 prohibits the enforcement of out-of-state warrants for parents or guardians who take a child to Minnesota for gender-transition care, currently restricted or banned for minors in 25 states. But it also goes further and empowers a Minnesota state court to have “temporary emergency jurisdiction” in the matter if a minor is denied access to such care or is considered at risk.

Walz’s Republican critics, including GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have accused Walz of allowing Minnesota to “kidnap” children to change their gender. In fact, the law does not remove children from parents who refuse consent for care affirming a child’s transgender identity; but it does allow the state to override parental objections?

Recent polls indicate what a thorny issue this. Blanket bans on trans care access for minors are opposed by about 60% of Americans in a Gallup poll released in June. Yet in a Washington Poll/Kaiser Family Foundation poll last year, 58% of Americans opposed access to gender-transition hormonal treatments for patients under 18 —and even more, 68%, opposed access to puberty-blocking drugs for children under 15. While “gender-affirming” care may involve simple counseling, it does include the option of such medical treatments.

Transgender advocates argue that those treatments are professionally recognized as the best standard of medical care. But this is an area of medicine where many critics who are not right-wing crusaders, such as respected science and health care journalist Benjamin Ryan, argue that science has been often compromised by politics and ideology.

These critics point out that many European countries, including bastions of progressivism such as Sweden, are backing away from medical interventions for children with gender dysphoria. In England, the National Health Service has stopped approving puberty blockers following a government-commissioned report by top pediatrician Hilary Cass which concluded that these treatments amount to an experiment whose long-term consequences are unknown.

In the U.S., the last few years have seen controversies about the amount of screening and counseling gender clinics perform before starting transition treatments for children and teenagers. Some professionals with long experience in trans care, such as clinical psychologist Erica Anderson (herself a trans woman) warn that, along with genuine cases of gender dysphoria, there has been a troubling rise in the number of confused teens who experiment with gender identities because of unrelated mental health issues, family crises, or even peer-group pressures.

Bans on all transition-related care including counseling, adopted in many conservative states, do not sit well with most Americans — especially when these laws come wrapped in rhetoric that makes Republicans look like bullies trying to force biblical morality on distressed kids and their parents. But the Democrats have their own serious liabilities when they embrace policies that promote contested forms of child medicine without adequate safeguards.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.