Another take on health care...

There seems to be a lot going on in the larger feminist blogosphere these days, and I've been following one issue in particular. Feministe explains it here, but in short, a transsexual woman blogger moved to New Orleans and attempted to locate a trans-friendly health care provider. She found the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic, which explicitly stated that it did not provide medical services for women who were assigned male at birth, and the blogger contacted them about some dodgy statements on their website. The clinic responded here.

I've been thinking about this in relation to our own community in South Dakota. This post, oft-linked on Dakota Women when discussing Leslee's shenanigans, includes a truly disturbing story of a lawsuit filed against Sanford Hospital (then Sioux Valley) by a trans woman who claimed she was denied treatment there for complications after having genital surgery. Anecdotally, a friend told me about a drag queen at Touchez (RIP) who fell and broke her hip while performing, who literally crawled off-stage and removed all makeup and female attire, and changed into "male" clothes before the ambulance arrived. The person who told me about this thought it was a funny story, but I thought - geez, there's some real distrust of the medical system among trans and gender variant folks in Sioux Falls. And rightfully so. My sense is that this is the tip of the iceberg with regard to trans people and health care in SD.

So, I guess this is a general call to our readers - has the situation improved in South Dakota? I once vaguely heard that Planned Parenthood staff received training on trans health care needs - is this the case? Was this ever communicated to trans communities?

Perhaps identifying trans-friendly health care providers is a project for one of our awesome but overextended LGBT or women's organizations to take on. It would meet a long overdue need, certainly.