In the US, the people who want to ban abortion will tell you that they don’t want to ban abortion; they just want to put some protections around some of it. This is a lie.

Also in the US, the people who want to ban healthcare for all trans people – who, not coincidentally, are usually people who want to ban abortion – will tell you that they don’t want to ban healthcare for all trans healthcare; they just want to protect children. This too is a lie.

We know these lies are lies because the people telling them admit it. For example in January, US Republican legislators discussed the importance of disguising their “endgame”, which was to ban all healthcare for trans adults. It was important to focus initially only on trans kids, the legislators said, because “what we know legislatively is we have to take small bites.”

As one of the legislators said:

we have to be looking at the endgame simultaneously, maybe even using that to move the window to say that this isn’t just wrong 0-18, it’s wrong for everyone and we shouldn’t be allowing that to happen.

This is how you ban people’s healthcare: slowly, and with small bites.

Here in the UK, we’re told that nobody wants to ban trans adults’ healthcare. This is a lie.

In the wake of the Cass review into teen healthcare, a review that prioritised anti-trans junk science and anti-trans activists over actual science and medical expertise, it has now been announced that there will be a review into the provision of trans healthcare for adults. If it too prioritises anti-trans junk science and anti-trans activists, then like the Cass review it will conclude that trans healthcare – which after years of underfunding and now political attacks is barely functioning, with people dying on waiting lists that in some cases are now decades long – needs to be restricted too, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This is dangerous not just for trans people, but for everybody. Because the Cass review now has people openly discussing a ban on trans healthcare for anyone under 25 to “protect children”, even though 18 to 25 year olds are adults, on the spurious (and untrue) grounds that brains are not fully developed until then. In effect, the claim is that you cannot consent to healthcare until you’re 25.

So far, this is only being discussed in relation to trans people. But if we establish the precedent that under-25s do not have bodily autonomy, women’s reproductive rights are next.

That’s the endgame.