‘The Protocol’: The Story Behind Medical Care for Transgender Kids

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode contains strong language. Since 2021, nearly half the states in the U.S. have passed bans on medical treatments for transgender minors. The Trump administration is now targeting the care, and in the coming weeks, the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in. Against that backdrop, “The Daily” is running the first episode of a six-part series from NYT Audio about the story of youth gender medicine — where it came from, whom it was meant to help, and what may come next in the legal and political fights over its future. It starts in the Netherlands, with a clinical psychologist and a 16 year-old who was determined to go through life as the gender he had long felt he was.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow.
0:06.7	Today, the first episode of our new series, The Protocol.
0:17.5	With a stroke of my pen on day one, we're going to stop the transgender lunacy.
0:23.6	I am so hated for just existing and being who I am.
0:31.6	It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government
0:36.6	that there are only two genders, male and female.
0:41.3	How has this impacted us? Well, it was already not a safe place, but now we feel like asylum seekers in our own country.
0:51.3	And now I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children
0:58.4	and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body.
1:04.4	This is a big lie.
1:07.8	Being able to transition absolutely saved my life.
1:13.8	It's only been about two decades since trans and gender nonconforming kids in the U.S.
1:19.3	have been able to get medical treatment to transition.
1:23.3	Now, the federal government is looking to end it.
1:27.6	And the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue in the coming weeks.
1:32.6	If the treatment's barred, some kids will suffer because they can't access the treatment.
1:39.6	If the treatment is allowed, some kids will suffer who get the treatment and later wish they hadn't.
1:46.0	And then the question becomes, how does the court choose which group?
1:53.0	Right.
1:56.0	Right.
1:57.0	Right.
1:58.0	You do not have the right to abuse your kids.
	...

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