Child rights in trans healthcare – a call to action

Child rights in trans healthcare – a call to action
Editorial
Cal Horton, Ruth Pearce, Jaimie Veale, T. C. Oakes-Monger, Ken C. Pang, Annie Pullen Sansfaçon, Sophie Quinney
International Journal of Transgender Health, 12 June 2024
Introduction
Trans healthcare has seen some positive changes over the past two decades, moving from the pathologisation of difference as ‘disorder’, to approaches that recognize and embrace the diversity, dignity and value of trans lives. In a short time, we have also seen a shift from widespread clinical control and gate-keeping to the growing adoption of affirmative approaches to trans healthcare, which are predicated on respecting trans and gender-diverse peoples’ rights to safe and respectful healthcare. Whilst these evolutions are welcome and important, progress is inconsistent and uneven, and subject to legislative and political rollback. Progress is particularly patchy and fragile in healthcare services for trans, gender-diverse, and gender non-conforming children, with children defined here as encompassing all non-adults under the ages of 18 (United Nations, Citation1989). In multiple countries affirmative healthcare is under attack, with children’s trans healthcare services bearing the brunt of attacks on rights-based practice. There are many locations where trans healthcare services for children fail to uphold trans children’s rights, with approaches in children’s services not keeping up with the improvements that are more widely being seen in adult trans healthcare…