The suit is the first by an attorney general against an individual doctor for allegedly violating a restriction on gender-affirming care for minors.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a Dallas doctor Thursday accusing her of providing transition-related care to nearly two dozen minors in violation of state law.

Paxton alleged that Dr. May Chi Lau, who specializes in adolescent medicine, provided hormone replacement therapy to 21 minors between October 2023 and August for the purpose of transitioning genders. In 2023, Texas enacted a law, Senate Bill 14, banning hormone replacement therapy and other forms of gender-affirming care for minors.

  • BertramDitore@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    156
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 days ago

    To add to the pile of evidence that this is all just hateful bigotry and has nothing to do with children’s safety, cisgender children can still legally access these drugs, but not for the purpose of transitioning genders. The same drugs can still be used to delay aggressive puberty, which is a standard and relatively common usage, as well as other conditions that might affect a cisgender child. But a trans child who needs the same drugs for a different reason, will be told too bad, you’re out of luck. So two children could walk into the same doctor’s office and one will be turned away and forced to suffer through their gender dysphoria, with permanent repercussions for their mental health and body, and the other child will be treated with the drugs they need to be treated with. It’s absurdly unfair, unequal, and purposefully harmful to a vulnerable population.

      • BertramDitore@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        44
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        The difference being, in this case, that this type of hormone treatment is a medically responsible and widely accepted treatment for both things.

        • NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          24
          ·
          5 days ago

          I don’t disagree with you at all.

          It wasn’t me arguing against the post, just thinking out loud basically.

          I like the philosophy aspect of finding where the line is.

          I do it with like everything.

          Figure this one out, usually people find things that are fluffier less edible, but a squirrel and a rat are essentially the same animal but people will totally eat squirrel, but I don’t ever hear of people commonly eating rat even when other food is available.

          The fluffiness actually works against it.

          A pigeon and a dove are the same damn thing only differently colored.

          Most people wouldn’t eat a pigeon, but they would eat a dove or a squab

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 days ago

        HRT and puberty blockers are preventative medicine. Specifically, they prevent that incurable disease known as suicide.

      • RedSeries@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        Are you implying that it’s okay for cisgender folks to get HRT and gender-affirming care, but it’s not okay if for transgender folks to seek the same care? Explain to me how your assertion here applies to what we’re talking about.

        • NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          3 days ago

          If I actually wanted I could have just deleted it and not have to deal with this, I don’t have a horse in this race.

          There will be side effects from everything, who am I to judge how medications should be used.

      • ArchRecord@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 days ago

        Except we don’t have any widespread evidence for cocaine being taken outside of highly specific medicinal cases being helpful to the health and wellbeing of the individual.

        When it comes to gender affirming care, we have substantial evidence that proves it is safe and effective, as even a cursory glance at medical research on the topic will show:

        https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(23)00118-7/fulltext

        https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/09540261.2015.1115753

        https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/article-abstract/2789423

        https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/trgh.2015.0008

      • sue_me_please@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        5 days ago

        Doctors aren’t prescribing cocaine for the hell of it, though. Same thing with puberty blockers. Think we can trust doctors’ judgment when it comes to the drugs they prescribe.

          • sue_me_please@awful.systems
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            3 days ago

            Doctors aren’t prescribing, nor are they they source of, illicit fentanyl. The ease of synthesis means that clandestine labs can make a shit ton of the stuff, it’s that simple.

            • mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              2 days ago

              Doctors legally prescribing fentanyl is what created the crisis. HHS estimates there are about 6.5m prescriptions per year in the 2010s

              That aside: corruption via pharmaceutical sales influence is a well known problem anyway. Medical doctors are not unbiased paragons of virtue

              • sue_me_please@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                20 hours ago

                Look at the stats, fentanyl has always been rarely prescribed and even more rarely prescribed compared to other opioids. The fentanyl crisis is a crisis of economics: there is less profit to be made in creating, smuggling and selling other opioids compared to fentanyl.

                If you want to be accurate, doctors prescribed non-fentanyl opioids in situations where they weren’t needed, often illegally, when those prescriptions ran out, that caused a heroin crisis. That heroin crisis became a fentanyl crisis when drug dealers stopped selling heroin in favor of the cheaper and much stronger fentanyl.

  • Joker@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    4 days ago

    I met this dude a few years ago and he is straight up nuts. It wasn’t like a brief thing. I spent hours with him. He’s as much of a douche bag as he seems like. I remember him bragging about all the lawsuits he filed against the Biden administration - something like 80+ - and ranting about the stolen election. It amazes me that he holds elected office. He’s a twat.

    • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 days ago

      Reminder that Texas has been Republican controlled for 28 years.

      They’ve been voting for this reality for decades. People should move away from Texas.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        3 days ago

        Reminder that Texas’s legislature and Congressiinal delegations were majority Democrat for 150 years, and it wasn’t until the boost from W’s Presidential election that they got their first majority.

        They then gerrymandered the shit out of the state out of cycle (it has been redistricted in response to the 2000 census the previous session) to flip it from majority-democrat to a 2/3rds Republican delegation to the House in a single election cycle.

        Texas isn’t nearly as red as people think. They got a slim majority in 2000 and 2002 and then rigged the game with gerrymandering and voter suppression.

      • Joker@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        4 days ago

        The AG. I didn’t think there would be any confusion as to who I was referring to. LOL

      • stembolts@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        4 days ago

        The elected doctor. /s

        Jk, I had a hard time pinpointing the target of speech as well, the final comment about holding elected office was the only indicator I found. Most people are really poor communicators/writers, eh?

        • Joker@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          4 days ago

          Paxton gets mentioned on almost a weekly basis and it’s always something scummy that he’s done. I assumed he was the only douche bag in this story. Then there’s the lawsuits against the Biden administration, complaints about a stolen election, and the part about being elected. I figured that was enough context to indicate who I was talking about. Maybe the doctor is a douche bag too, but I didn’t meet him so I don’t know.

    • SuiXi3D@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      5 days ago

      My doctor closed her practice in the state. She’s the kindest doctor I’ve ever had the pleasure of dealing with, and I’m sad that I have to find a new one.

    • pingveno@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      4 days ago

      Politician, perhaps. But I’m going to have to put a spotlight on Jonathan Mitchell, who came up with the structure behind the Texas Heartbeat Bill, which did an end run around judicial review by allowing enforcement via civil action by damn near anyone. The usual way to legally dispute a potentially unconstitutional law is to sue the government officials that enforce it, but because there wasn’t a specific person there was no real way to bring it to the judicial branch.

      • 418_im_a_teapot@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 days ago

        Sounds like a great strategy for reasonable gun legislation. Is your neighbor not responsibly securing their firearm? Sue them and get some money out of it.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    5 days ago

    This doc is a hero!

    Also, wouldn’t it be cool to send a message to Paxton, and send a few fed lawyers to be her defense…. ? (Biden… I’m looking at you.)

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    5 days ago

    We should punish the people hurting our children, like this jackass attorney general preventing them from getting treatment for Gender Dysphoria.

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 days ago

    Why does he look like that alien from Men In Black that’s basically just a giant space roach wearing a human’s skin?