Trump’s anti-trans health care plan ‘could lead to HIV care cuts’
Donald Trump wants to remove health care protections for trans people. (Getty)
A leading health care professional has warned that Donald Trump’s plan to roll back trans health care could lead to further discrimination against marginalised groups, including those who are HIV-positive.
The White House proposal “lays the groundwork for the Trump administration to cut services to other populations,” Kazumi Yamaguchi, associate director of Transgender Health Services at St. John’s Well Child & Family Centers, wrote for The Hill.
“In reality, this attack is a testing ground for this administration to undo protections for many Americans,” Yamaguchi wrote.
Yamaguchi suggested that the roll backs would eventually lead to restrictions on reproductive healthcare, including abortion, and to cuts to services for people with HIV.
“Undoing Section 1557 is a clear attempt to prioritise white, wealthy, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual, English speaking men.”
Trump wants to undo trans health care protections
Trump’s administration wants to remove Obama-era protections which explicitly ban health care providers from discriminating on the basis of gender identity.
The proposal would continue to ban discrimination “on the basis of race, colour, national origin, disability, age, and sex” – but would leave the term “sex” open to interpretation.
This is a clear attempt to prioritise white, wealthy, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual, English speaking men.
The White House said the protections needed to be altered because “a federal court found they were unlawful and exceeded Congress’s mandate.”
It added that the new rule would allow the words to be used “using their plain meaning when they were written, instead of attempting to redefine sex discrimination to include gender identity and termination of pregnancy.”
More than 120,000 oppose Trump’s anti-trans plan
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announced on Wednesday that it had collected more than 120,000 signatures against the proposal, which HRC president Alphonso David said “puts LGBTQ people at greater risk of being denied health care solely based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“Everyone deserves access to care, and no one should be turned away because of who they are or whom they love,” David added
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren became the latest high-profile name to criticise the plan on Tuesday (August 13).
Warren tweeted: “Everyone should be able to access high-quality, affordable, gender-affirming health care. But the Trump administration is trying to roll back important protections for trans Americans.”
