My Medical Association Silenced My Views on Gender Treatment

I’m a board-certified obstetrician, a lesbian, a mother, a lifelong Democrat, and up until recently, someone who placed immense faith and trust in the institutions that guided my profession.

I served as the chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Iowa section for a year and a half, where I dedicated my time to expanding women’s health access to rural areas in my state.

But in March, one of ACOG’s vice presidents called me into a meeting and told me I had a choice: resign from my position as chair, or stop publicly criticizing ACOG’s endorsement of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s guidelines for transgender medical care.

I had come to realize that our profession was not doing the right thing by encouraging medicalization and surgery for transgender patients, when robust evidence that these treatments provided long-term health benefits did not exist.

The choice was easy.