Gender Affirming Care is Life-Saving Healthcare

Members of the Legislative Council, Parliament of South Australia

Gender affirming healthcare saves lives. Yet our healthcare is under attack, with continued politicisation of the safe and evidence-based treatments that help us thrive.

Most recently we've been disappointed to note that this politicisation continues in our own South Australian Parliament. The latest of these attacks is an ill-advised suggestion from the Hon Frank Pangallo to set up a Select Committee to inquire into and report on young people seeking assistance for gender dysphoria in South Australia and related matters.

The South Australian Rainbow Advocacy Alliance rejects the assertion that such an inquiry is needed. The Australian Standards of Care and Treatment of Trans and Gender Diverse Children and Adolescents is a robust set of guidelines designed by academics and health professionals to ensure that appropriate care is provided in a way that involves parents and legal guardians, legal representatives as well as recipients of care in the decision making process. There are strict criteria in place for adolescents seeking access to puberty blockers and or hormones.

If passed, SARAA believe that this Select Committee will provide a platform to amplify dangerous and false narratives regarding the impacts of gender affirming care for gender diverse youth, which may disempower them and propose recommendations which would roll back the protections for gender diverse youth which our community has long fought for within our legal, medical and education systems.

UPDATE WEDS 7 FEB 2024: We thank the SA Labor Party, the SA Greens and Michelle Lensink MLC who have already committed to voting down this inquiry. We call on all Members of the Legislative Council  to vote down the motion today.




To: Members of the Legislative Council, Parliament of South Australia
From: [Your Name]

We reject the idea that a Select Committee be established to inquire into and report on young people seeking assistance for gender dysphoria in South Australia and applaud the work being done by medical professionals to support the needs of trans and gender diverse South Australians.

Trans and gender diverse South Australians continue to face discrimination in parliament, in clinical settings, and in the community.

Sadly this is a common phenomena across the globe despite the great weight of medical authority supporting gender affirming care.

Withholding treatment for trans and gender diverse children and adolescents (in a bid to wait for them to “grow out of it”) is not a neutral position to take and can in fact be deeply psychologically damaging.