Fact Check: Intentional Mischaracterizations of Transgender Health Care

Article updated on 6/27/25.

In the wake of the Supreme Court upholding Skrmetti (the Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for trans youth) and amid a wave of relentless coordinated efforts to deny transgender people essential health care, it is important to recognize and understand the disinformation and hate-driven rhetoric being employed in these attacks. Journalists and media outlets should not uncritically repeat these intentionally false framings of transgender health care and transgender people without accurately characterizing them.

Transition-related health care for transgender people, including youth, is supported by every major U.S. medical association and leading health authority. Efforts to ban and criminalize this care are not based in medical nor scientific expertise, and frequently employ intentional misinformation about what health care for trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people may encompass.

The Facts:

Opponents of transgender rights, including anti-equality politicians and right-wing media figures, often use inflammatory mischaracterizations of transgender health care to fearmonger and dehumanize transgender people — employing incendiary terms, such as “mutilation,” “castration,” and “sterilization.” This deliberately misleading and dangerous rhetoric is being used as a premise to systematically criminalize trans healthcare and roll back the basic human and civil rights of trangender people, especially youth. A striking example of this dangerous trend is the January 2025 White House executive order (“Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation”), which uses inflammatory language to justify the erosion of trans rights at the federal level. A February 2025 Poynter Fact Check categorically explains that these are “claims that clash with leading medical research and practice.” LGBTQ health organization GLMA notes the chilling effect of the Trump administration weaponized misinformation being perpetuated around trans healthcare: “threats of legal action from government officials have made providers hesitant to continue treating trans patients.”
Related malicious terms and conspiracy theories include baseless assertions that being transgender is an ideology (“transgenderism,” “gender ideology”) or contagious (“Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” or “ROGD”), or the result of indoctrination (“transing,” “groomer”). As the Center for Countering Digital Hate explains: “Anti-LGBTQ+ hate and lies often aim to dehumanize people in the community, generate fear across society and, ultimately, backtrack on their fundamental rights and promote violence.”
Explaining the impact of malicious mischaracterizations of transgender healthcare, the 2024 GLAAD Social Media Safety Index notes that: “The sensationalized word choice in these tropes is designed to elicit a strong reaction from parents and guardians of young kids — and also potentially inspires violence against healthcare providers who are characterized as perpetrating this perceived harm.”
From June 2022 – June 2025, GLAAD’s ALERT Desk tracked nearly 300 anti-LGBTQ incidents (290) that specifically target health care providers and their patients. These include 118 protests, 34 hateful propaganda campaigns, and six bomb threats. After one such attack, Dr. Izzy Lowell told GLAAD: “Our office was burnt to the ground by arsonists in late 2023, followed by the Texas attorney general’s unlawful attempt to access our patient data. We refused to comply, and will not ever disclose HIPAA-protected data. We at QueerMed will never stop providing affirming medical care for transgender and nonbinary people, despite physical attacks and unfounded government threats.”
In a June 2025 report about the systemic federal and state criminalization and dismantling of transgender health care across the U.S., Human Rights Watch reports that: “The consequences of losing access to gender-affirming care have been catastrophic for thousands of transgender youth and their families … As an 18-year-old trans woman whose care was interrupted by a state ban put it: ‘I want [lawmakers] to know they’re ruining people’s lives.’”
Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE) notes that: “For adolescents, any medical transition care such as hormone therapy or puberty blockers are only prescribed based on an individual young person’s needs. Any surgical care for teenagers under 18 is rare and individualized.” Research shows access to puberty blockers during adolescence is associated with a significant decrease in suicidal ideation. Doctors have used these medications safely for decades for cisgender children who experience precocious puberty.
The Movement Advancement Project (MAP) explains that: “Bans on best-practice medical care represent one of the most extreme and coordinated political attacks on transgender people in recent years. These bills not only display a fundamental lack of understanding of transgender children, but they also ban access to medical care often by criminalizing either the doctors or even the parents of transgender youth seeking to provide best-practice medicine for children in their care.” According to MAP’s map of trans youth medical care bans, as of June 2025, 25 states have banned best-practice medication and surgical care for transgender youth (though some bans may not be in effect). Six of those states have made it a felony crime to provide certain forms of best practice medical care for transgender youth.

When covering transgender health care, journalists should challenge misleading assertions, require evidence to back up claims, or avoid reporting unsubstantiated assertions altogether. If newsmakers use inflammatory rhetoric, journalists should clarify that such language is inaccurate, lacks scientific basis, and is used to dehumanize LGBTQ people and spread misinformation about evidence-based care — supported by every major U.S. medical association. Reporting should also include fact checks and feature the voices of trans and nonbinary people.