Author ORCID Identifier
Abstract
Conservative politicians, lawmakers, and media have generated a national moral panic about transgender children and youth that has resulted, as of early 2024, in restrictions or bans on GAC for minors in twenty-four states. In these bans and the advocacy around them gender-affirming care for minors is presented as harmful, ideological, unnecessary, and likely to lead to future regret. The role of regret in the movement to ban gender-affirming care parallels the role of regret in the ongoing conservative campaign to ban abortion. In the years between Roe v. Wade (1973) and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), politicians and lawmakers promoted the idea that pregnant people may come to regret the decision to end a pregnancy, and that laws should protect them from that decision.
This Article analyzes the use of “regret” in bans on abortion and on gender-affirming care for minors. It identifies two overlapping legal threads. First, both campaigns against medical care point to protection of patients from future regret as a legitimate state interest justifying restrictions on providing medical care. Second, both rely on alleged concerns about regret to redefine the legal meaning of “informed consent” and make it easier for potential future plaintiffs to prevail in civil suits against providers of medical care. In doing so, both treat the emotion of regret as a distinct injury that may give rise to a range of legal rights and liabilities. The Article reveals how conservative politicians and lawmakers use “regret” as a disciplinary tool to promote traditional family values, especially involving natalism and “biological” sex difference.
Recommended Citation
Noa Ben-Asher & Margot J. Pollans, Gender Regrets: Banning Abortion and Gender-Affirming Care, 2024 ULR 763 (2024).
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons, Law and Gender Commons