The Right to Gender Affirming Care ​

Lauren Chirinos

Co-Presenters: Faith Clark

College: College of Liberal Arts

Major: Commmunication

Faculty Research Mentor: Adara Goldberg

Abstract:

All human beings are deserving of dignity, safety, and security. For many Transgender youth, this sense of dignity, comfort, or safety in their own bodies is missing due to the feelings of gender differences from their assigned sex at birth. For this reason, some Transgender youth seek to medically transition in order to feel comfortable in their own bodies.Medically transitioning can include puberty blockers, hormone treatments, gender affirming surgeries, in order to halt or change puberty into the gender they better align with or away from their assigned gender at birth. Drawing on research that addresses the psychosocial and health benefits of gender affirming care for Transgender youth, this study demonstrates that gender affirming care and medical transitioning constitutes a human right according to Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 25, which states that everyone has the right to medical care.