evidence: Clarifying Misconceptions About Youth Gender-Affirming Care [...] As part of a series on the effects of state bans on gender-affirming care for youth, MedPage Today spoke with more than a dozen experts, including transgender people, clinicians, families, and staff at clinics and resource centers that serve the LGBTQ+ community. We heard some of the same points being made, time after time, about gender-affirming care, and what this community hoped the public could understand about it. [...] Gender-affirming care is not just puberty delaying medications, or using estrogen or testosterone, it's not the surgical aspect of it. They [lawmakers] act like the surgery happens, can happen anywhere. I guess honestly, parents can consent their kids for any sort of plastic surgery, some crazy things -- but none of the children's hospitals, and none of my colleagues. I cannot name anybody who can name a child who got a surgery under age 18. It does not happen.