Santa Cruz County LGBTQ+ panel explains 'why you should care about gender-affirming care'

MSN ^ | February 10, 2026 | PK Hattis

[artichokegrower]

When Ash began receiving services and care that aligned with his gender identity, it changed his life.

“I have made tremendous strides with my mental health,” Ash said, speaking before an audience of approximately 50 people Friday inside the Capitola Branch Public Library. “I think a lot of that would probably not stand up without gender-affirming care because gender-affirming care has made me feel like I have a life worth living.”

That care has included doses of testosterone for almost a year, but Ash, 17, emphasized that a more expansive definition of “gender-affirming care” was essential to appropriately capturing all that contributed to the positive transformation.

[artichokegrower]

I live in Santa Cruz County. They are celebrating mutilating minor children.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

From the article, to HIGHLIGHT:

“I have made tremendous strides with my mental health,” Ash said...."

So it's a mental health issue. Not a drugs and plastic surgery issue. And beside, another transgender jackass just killed his mother and then a lot of kids in Canada, because "mental health" is not a laughing matter, not a surgical issue and not anything more than a sickened psyche.

No individual patient with "mental health" issues is in a place to testify to his or her own "strides."

[Wuli]

The ONLY truly gender affirming care is sympathetic compassionate professional mental health care that helps the person affirm their biological gender.

[hanamizu]

So it’s a mental health issue.

---

I’m not a doctor, so my ignorance might be obvious, but is giving a girl doses of testosterone a standard ‘mental health’ treatment?

[bk1000]

Calling child mutilation “gender-affirming care” should be a crime.
They don’t like misinformation. That is misinformation if anything is.

[bigbob]

Care would treating their mental illness

[Honorary Serb]

Transgender “treatments” are NOT “gender-affirming”!

[JimRed]

It is gender denying, not affirming.

[libertylover]

I already care about it. I’m completely opposed to genital mutilation surgery, especially for children.

[17th Miss Regt]

"You should care about it because if you don't, some of us will go to schools and shoot up the place."

"And if we do care about it?..."

"We'll still go around shooting up schools, but you'll have our approval."

[thecodont]

Whatever happened to this poor girl that she has reached this level of mental health crisis. Someone in her family has failed her.

[darkangel82]

Time for the FBI to bum rush Santa Cruz County like the Seahawks did to Drake Maye in the Super Bowl, and make some arrests

[SaveFerris]

(gender-affirming care)

GODLESS REPROBATE DEMOCRATS mutilate children
for That Old Serpent 🐍 Called the Devil and Satan

Democrats are at
War with Reality,
Biology and
Almighty God