Gregory Wayne Abbott (born November 13, 1957) is an American attorney who has served as the 48th governor of Texas since January 20, 2015. A member of the Republican Party, Abbott previously served as the 50th attorney general of Texas from 2002 to 2015. He is the third governor of any U.S. state to permanently use a wheelchair. He is also the first disabled governor in Texas history.
The Harrowing Experience of Fighting for Gender-Affirming Health Care
Greg Abbott has instructed the state's Department of Family and Protective Services to prosecute the parents of trans kids as child abusers.
These attacks are not new. At the U.S. House Financial Services Committee hearing in 2021, "There's No Pride in Prejudice: Eliminating Barriers to Full Economic Inclusion for the LGBTQ+ Community," the activist Tanya Asapansa-Johnson Walker made this statement:"From 1990 through 2010, it was virtually impossible to find doctors or other medical providers to assist with my transition...I've been laughed at, misgendered, deadnamed, and at times declared mentally ill.
One of my doctors called me schizophrenic and prescribed me pills for a condition I didn't have."Walker, a U.S. military veteran and trans woman, suffered some of her worst abuse in 2017 after undergoing a second surgery for lung cancer. "The night nurses wouldn't come into the room.
I had to crawl on the floor to clean the room myself. They wouldn't clean the room," she says. "They refused to give me my HIV meds and treated me really like I was an animal." In 2020, Walker and Cecilia Gentili were plaintiffs in a case brought by the Human Rights Campaign after the Trump administration rolled back protections in the Affordable Care Act that addressed discrimination faced by the trans community in health care settings.Tanya Asapansa-Johnson Walker joins the LGBTQ&A podcast this week to talk about these immense barriers she's faced in the U.S.
