Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is taking a more conservative stance on gender-affirming care, though he says it won’t be a central issue in his campaign.
“It’s abortion, it’s the border, it’s trans rights. These issues are all important,” he said at a meeting in Austin last week. “None of these issues are the issues that really matter to you, to me, to our children.”
Kennedy recently called gender-affirming care a “non-existential” issue, but he has spoken out about it and supports a ban on certain treatments, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors. His running mate, Nicole Shanahan, agrees.
Shanahan, a former attorney from California, joined a podcast hosted by Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who opposes allowing trans female athletes to compete in women’s sports, saying medical professionals were reckless with prescriptions that block puberty.
“We’ve all been there,” Shanahan said on “Gaines for Girls,” downplaying the impact of gender dysphoria some children experience as just the “awkward years” that are part of every adolescence.
Last Saturday, Shanahan supported Kennedy’s position: post on X“To be clear, you CAN support LGBTQ causes AND ALSO believe that children are too young to consent to puberty blockers.”
While Kennedy said he sympathizes with those who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, he also said he has recently been “troubled” by the idea of giving puberty blockers to minors and labeling them as “castration drugs.” He also called gender reassignment procedures “surgical mutilation” and said such treatments should be postponed until adulthood.
“Minors can’t drive, vote, join the military, get a tattoo, smoke or drink because we know children don’t fully understand the consequences of decisions that have lifelong consequences.” he wrote on X earlier this month.
Kennedy has a history of spreading disinformation on LGBTQ issues, including conspiracies that chemicals in the environment could make children homosexual or transgender, which have no basis in scientific research.
He said in a 2022 episode of his podcast that chemicals are “descending on our children” that will “interfere with normal sexual development and neurological development.”
The Kennedy campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Many medical experts from leading institutions consider gender-affirming care to be a medical necessity, which can be extremely difficult to access due to bans enacted by some states. Currently, bans are in place in 23 states, meaning comprehensive care is limited and available primarily in large metropolitan areas, leading to long wait times for people seeking specialized care.
Once seen, experts say, the decision-making process for any treatment or procedure typically involves multiple visits and consultations with medical and mental health experts, as well as with the parents or guardians. As for gender-affirming surgeries for minors, experts say these procedures are extremely rare and largely viewed as adult procedures.
According to Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine who specializes in the care of adolescents, says only about 3% of young people with gender dysphoria are prescribed puberty blockers. And there is no evidence that this treatment causes long-term or irreversible damage to the physical or cognitive development of a minor.
But when transgender and gender-diverse youth don’t have access to essential health care, their health and well-being suffer and families become destabilized, she said.
“So this candidate assumes that young people can wait until age 18, but that would mean going an inordinately long period of time without evidence-based treatment,” said McNamara. “I can’t think of a good reason for that.”
