Trans Health Care Is A Life and Death Matter

Robert Eads was visiting friends in the late 1990s when he woke up in a pool of blood. His terrified hosts quickly began calling hospitals, clinics, and private physicians, explaining that Robert was a partially-transitioned female-to-male transsexual and demanding an immediate appointment. The request was repeatedly rebuffed. By the time Eads found physicians willing to diagnose and treat him at an Augusta, Georgia teaching hospital — a three-hour drive from his home in rural Taccoa, Georgia — his ovarian cancer was so advanced that nothing could be done to save his life. He died in 1999, at age 53. Some patients drive as much as seven hours each way His friends were outraged but knew that Eads’ experience was not anomalous. While transsexual identity is rare — the American Psychological Association estimates that two to three percent of men periodically cross dress but that only one in 10,000 biological males

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