More than 200 trans people (that we know of) in the UK have been refused basic healthcare by their GPs, in many cases after years of receiving that healthcare. A new report (PDF) by TransActual goes into detail: in most cases it’s not that new requests are being refused; it’s that existing healthcare is being stopped unilaterally by GPs. Almost half of the people who spoke to TransActual had been receiving the care for more than 5 years.

I’m one of the people who’s been refused healthcare, and like many others I’ve been told it’s because of guidelines by the Royal College of General Practitioners, now clarified to make it clear that trans people’s healthcare should not be stopped. Others – adults – have been told that it’s because of the Cass Review, which was a (worthless, politicised) study of adolescent services and didn’t look at adult healthcare at all. Some have been told that their GP “doesn’t believe in” gender clinics.

In Edinburgh, the gender clinic has stopped all surgical referrals for adults under 25 – again, citing the Cass Review. Meanwhile at current clearance rates the Glasgow gender clinic will see you for a first healthcare appointment seven years after you’re first referred, if indeed your GP will refer you; the reason we had self-referral, which has now been stopped, was because bigoted GPs were refusing to refer trans people.

Stopping or refusing basic trans healthcare isn’t just dangerous and unethical. It is in defiance of the General Medical Council, which tells doctors that “you must not refuse to provide a patient with medical services because the patient is proposing to undergo, is undergoing, or has undergone gender reassignment.” And it’s the result of endless scaremongering and demonisation in the press and by politicians.

You’d think that GPs deciding to stop treating hundreds of patients would be news. But of course, the papers who should be reporting this are the ones responsible for it.

In the 1990s, the Labour government had to be dragged kicking and screaming through the European courts to give trans people basic human rights. It looks like history is repeating. And in the meantime, trans people will suffer.

I try not to wish ill on people. But I hope that every so-called gender-critical columnist, celebrity and politician experiences all of the pain they want to inflict on trans people. May they never know peace.