On February 24, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) released the following statement in response to the governor and attorney general’s efforts in Texas to classify gender-affirming care as child abuse:
“The AAFP is deeply concerned by the growing trend of recent legal opinions and legislative efforts to restrict the delivery of care to specific patient populations. The AAFP strongly opposes any such effort to criminalize or penalize physicians for providing comprehensive care for their patients.
“The AAFP has long supported access to care for all patient groups, including access to gender-affirming care. Government should not create barriers to health care, encourage overt discrimination, unfairly limit health insurance coverage, or interfere in the physician-patient relationship.
“Physicians must be able to practice medicine that is informed by their years of medical education, training, experience, and the available evidence, freely and without threat of punishment. Ultimately, patients and their physicians, not policymakers, should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them.”
The Group of Six also issued a statement on this issue.