Op/Ed: Puberty blockers were safe until Indiana legislators and governor said otherwise
When I was 7 years old, I started going through puberty. Precocious puberty is common in my mother’s family, so she immediately recognized the signs and took me to Riley Children’s Hospital. For the next few years, I visited a pediatric endocrinologist to determine how best to halt and delay my puberty. My parents decided they wanted to pursue the standard, tried-and-true treatment: GnRH analogue therapy, more commonly known as puberty blockers.
For both my parents and my doctors, there was never any safety concern with puberty blockers. The primary side effect (potential bone thinning) was known and treatable, and my parents firmly believed that the benefits outweighed the risks. It never occurred to anyone involved to think of puberty blockers as dangerous. They have been in use since the 1980s, and they are the primary treatment for precocious puberty. There was never any doubt that this medicine was safe or that I should have access to it.
Now, under Senate Bill 480, it is illegal in Indiana to provide puberty blockers to minors to treat gender dysphoria. This ban’s language ensures that people like me, who have medical conditions that are not gender dysphoria, could access the necessary care. Here’s the catch: at 12, I came out as transgender. So, at 7, puberty blockers were the appropriate treatment for me, but five years later, they posed such a great danger to me that it was made illegal to prescribe them?
Politicians’ explanations hardly shed light on this incoherence. Rep. Joanna King, a sponsor of the bill, said that it banned treatment that is “irreversible, harmful and life-altering.” Attorney General Todd Rokita claimed that puberty blockers cause infertility. But neither statement is true. The documented infertility in trans youth who took blockers is a result of the hormone replacement therapy they later took, not the blockers themselves. The entire function of blockers is to delay the irreversible, life-altering effects of puberty. In children with precocious puberty, this delay allows them to start puberty at an appropriate age. For transgender children, this delay prevents them from having to go through permanent physical changes before they are old enough to fully understand and commit to a certain type of puberty. Blockers are the solution to delaying the very “irreversible” medical care about which Republican legislators are allegedly concerned.
Though I am relieved that Hoosier children with precocious puberty and other hormonal disorders will still have access to necessary medical treatment, I’m dumbfounded by the implications of this allowance. By permitting children without gender dysphoria to access the very medications they are banning, the legislature conceded the crux of their defense of this bill: They are admitting that blockers are safe for children; they just don’t want transgender children to have access.
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Having been both the child with precocious puberty and the transgender child suffering the consequences of puberty, I find this particularly ludicrous. What about me changed so radically with my gender dysphoria diagnosis that I no longer deserved the medical care that was previously open to me? My reproductive organs would react identically to the blockers (that is, simply not developing until I stopped taking them) whether I realized I am transgender or not. For all their posturing, legislators are not actually concerned about the safety of transgender children. If they were, they would have listened to the 200 Hoosier health care professionals who opposed the ban due to the harm it will cause to the very children they claim to protect. They would have done the same research my parents did over a decade ago and come to the same conclusion.
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The narrative that puberty blockers are some new, dangerous experimental drug is blatantly false. I am far from the first person in my family to be diagnosed with precocious puberty, nor am I the first to seek puberty blockers as treatment. My family history is just one story confirming what medical studies have concluded: puberty blockers are safe. They were safe for me when I was experiencing precocious puberty, and despite what the Indiana legislature and the governor claim, they are safe for today’s transgender youth. This ban is not about safety, and it is time we stop pretending otherwise.
Shay Orentlicher (they/them) was born and raised in Indianapolis. They are currently a student at Columbia University studying political science and English.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Puberty blockers OK for one group of kids but not another in Indiana
