Puberty blocker ban: What it may imply for transgender teenagers and their households in New Zealand

“What do you want me to call you?”

“Oh, I really prefer to go by Zoe, but most of my family call me David.”

The lady who requested the query was Julia, a 36-year-old constructing business employee.

She has now been Zoe’s guardian for 5 years, after Zoe’s mum struggled to simply accept her daughter’s gender identification, she tells the Herald.

For some transgender younger folks, like Zoe, who’s now 19, getting into puberty will be distressing.

“She hated the feeling of testosterone in her body,” says Julia, who can be transgender.

“The way it makes you smell. The skin texture. The body hair grows. Everything. She didn’t really like even the start of those effects in her body.”

According to the 2023 Census, there are greater than 26,000 transgender folks in Aotearoa. That’s round 0.5% of the full inhabitants. It additionally discovered 15,039 folks have been born with a variation of intercourse traits.

But it’s troublesome to acquire exact information. The Census counts solely those that select to answer the survey, dwell residentially and are aged 15 and over.

Stigma and disgrace might imply others really feel they’ll’t be open about their gender identification.

The Ministry of Health says the variety of younger folks with gender dysphoria on puberty blockers was 113 in 2023, down from 140 in 2021.

At 13, medical doctors prescribed Zoe gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues, generally often known as “puberty blockers”.

They are medication that quickly suppress pubertal intercourse hormones (chemical messengers), like oestrogen and testosterone, which develop each bodily and behavioural pubertal traits.

New Zealand’s puberty blocker ban

New prescriptions for puberty blockers have been to be banned on December 19, 2025. Introduced final November, the coverage below the Medicines Act prevented clinicians from prescribing puberty blockers to new sufferers who’re transgender youngsters, or adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria or gender incongruence.

The latter is the psychological misery arising from the sensation of being born within the unsuitable physique, or assigned the unsuitable intercourse at beginning.

However, on December 17, an pressing injunction filed by Professional Association for Trans Health Aotearoa (PATHA) was granted by the High Court, halting the laws from coming into pressure till a judicial evaluation on May 6-7.

PATHA is an interdisciplinary skilled organisation that works to advertise the well being, wellbeing and rights of transgender folks.

Health Minister Simeon Brown was prompted to introduce the brand new coverage after the findings of the 2024 Cass Review, an impartial report commissioned by NHS England and authored by Dr Hilary Cass, which stated gender drugs was constructed on “shaky foundations”.

Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora echoed this in its 2024 proof transient, stating: “Given the dearth and poor quality of evidence, and New Zealand-specific evidence, there is an urgent need for high-quality, longitudinal data and research to help us understand the specific needs of gender-dysphoric adolescents in New Zealand”.

The ban was to stay till the completion of a serious scientific trial within the United Kingdom assessing its use on this context, Brown stated on November 19.

Since then, the trial has been paused after security considerations raised by the nation’s medicines watchdog, which cited “unquantified risk of long-term biological harms” to members.

The Herald has contacted the Ministry of Health for remark.

Hitting pause

Puberty blockers have been used clinically in New Zealand for greater than 30 years to deal with youngsters experiencing precocious or early-onset puberty.

It’s widespread to make use of them to additionally deal with breast and prostate cancers, endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome for kids and adults.

Sometimes, the treatment is prescribed off-label, which means it’s used for a goal apart from what it was initially manufactured for.

Off-label prescriptions usually are not unusual. For about 15 years in New Zealand, it’s been used off-label to deal with gender dysphoria or gender incongruence.

For Zoe, it meant the facial hair stopped. It meant a number of the “downstairs development” stopped.

“She essentially passed as a girl and it never really got questioned,” says Julia.

Hitting the pause button on puberty permits transgender younger folks to have time to “psychologically mature and become old enough to make decisions that will have permanent implications for their later body appearance”, explains Professor Paul Hofman, a paediatric endocrinologist from the University of Auckland.

“Many, if not the majority, of these youth, react negatively to developing secondary sexual characteristics [physical traits caused by puberty such as the development of breasts or facial hair] that are of the gender they don’t feel they are.”

He provides that “some self-harm” and “others become suicidal”.

A 2022 Counting Ourselves survey report revealed in February researched the well being and wellbeing of New Zealand trans and non-binary folks.

It recognized that half of the 2631 members had intentionally injured themselves, and over half had critically thought-about suicide no less than as soon as.

About 10% had tried suicide.

“I can’t imagine her life being who she is internally and looking vastly different externally. I think she would have been miserable,” says Julia.

“Having known she has attempted [suicide in the past] … I’m worried that she would have been successful had she not had access to this health care.”

‘She’s really blossomed’

Puberty blockers are reversible.

“Once stopped, puberty will recur after a three to 12-month period,” Hofman tells the Herald.

This meant that Zoe, who desires to have organic youngsters in the future, may safely protect her fertility.

“Zoe is a case of someone who did want to still have biological kids at some point. That discussion was had prior to her getting on the pathway to starting cross-sex hormones,” says Julia.

“We talked through what that means. And what that meant was coming off her blockers.

“When that ran out … we just let it trail off, and it was about five months after that she was able to produce viable sperm and deposit for her fertility [before going back on the blockers].”

Now, Zoe is taking cross-sex hormones, a steroid hormone reverse to at least one’s organic intercourse (for a trans man, this might be testosterone and for a trans lady, this might be oestrogen) that one will be prescribed from the age of 16.

“She’s truly blossomed ever since [starting them],” says Julia.

“She’s just gone up and up, and she’s doing really well. She graduated from high school last year – the first in her family to do so.

“She’s going to do a nursing course … she’s excited about her career prospects.”

While adjustments from cross-sex hormones are everlasting and will result in infertility, in contrast to puberty blockers, that are reversible and don’t have any impact on fertility, there was no point out of them when the Government launched the ban.

Justice Wilkinson-Smith famous in her judgment that the Ministry of Health’s Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS), supplied to the Health Minister, Simeon Brown, suggested that choices about prescribing puberty blockers ought to proceed to sit down with clinicians.

According to the judgment, Brown accepted the opinions of the Cabinet, which don’t replicate the medical recommendation outlined within the RIS.

“Whether that suffices as an exercise of the Minister’s statutory power will need to be decided, but the factual picture is now quite clear, and it supports PATHA’s position that this was a political decision and contrary to advice from the Ministry,” wrote Wilkinson-Smith.

Wilkinson-Smith added there’s an argument that laws are discriminatory.

“That is because there is no doubt that puberty blockers are regarded as sufficiently safe to treat precocious puberty, and children begin puberty blockers earlier and remain on them for longer when used for that purpose,” she wrote.

“The concerns about bone density do not apparently justify a ban on puberty blockers generally but only when used for gender dysphoria or gender incongruence.”

Julia fears a ban might lead folks to show to riskier measures.

“I’m absolutely worried that people are going to turn to DIY and do black-market ways of accessing their health care,” she says.

“Stopping trans health care doesn’t stop people from being trans. It just makes them harder to receive their health care and makes them miserable.”

Varsha Anjali is a journalist within the way of life crew on the Herald. She is predicated in Auckland.