Aaron Lochmann’s mom was driving him home from surgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center when he looked at his phone and got what was perhaps the most poorly timed news of his 19-year-old life. The LGBTQ+ clinic where Lochmann saw a primary care provider and got a prescription for testosterone — and which had recently referred him for the chest surgery he had just undergone — was being shut down by hospital leadership. 

Too sleepy from the anesthesia, he didn’t know what to think.  

But on Tuesday afternoon, Lochmann, still wearing bandages, joined about a dozen other people who protested UMMC’s decision to close the TEAM clinic, which stands for “Trustworthy, Evidence-based, Affirming, Multidisciplinary.”

“I’m just appalled and really upset, because I don’t have access to basic health care anymore,” he said. 

The pioneering clinic, founded in 2015, had been subject to political pressure. A legislative investigation was launched after conservative lawmakers learned the clinic was providing gender-affirming care, like hormone therapy and puberty blockers, to transgender kids. At that point, UMMC executives worked with the clinic’s leadership to create a plan to stop treating trans kids at the clinic, according to documents obtained by Mississippi Today. 

But last week’s decision was made unilaterally. The co-director of the center that oversees the clinic, Alex Mills, was not consulted. And many patients found out they were losing access to health care that aimed to be safe and affirming for the LGBTQ+ community in the same way Lochmann did — from an article in Mississippi Today. 

Some patients still have not received a call from UMMC, said Jason McCarty, the executive director of Capital City Pride, a Jackson-based nonprofit that organized Tuesday’s protest along with several other LGTBQ+ organizations. 

At the start of the protest, held by the intersection on State Street that UMMC employees regularly cross, McCarty was passing out rainbow flags that he purchased with the intention of celebrating Pride Month. 

“You want to throw this shit on me during Pride Month?” he said. “We’re not gonna allow nonsense like this to rain on our parade.” 

The protest’s main request, McCarty said, was for UMMC to notify all existing patients that the TEAM clinic was closing and to help them find a new provider that would continue all aspects of their care.

“We understand the clinic is closed,” he said. “We get it. It’s not coming back. But we want to make sure people don’t get lost in the already bad system that is health care in Mississippi. Is that too much to ask?”

Since Friday, he said he has emailed Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, with that request. Woodward hasn’t responded. 

Much of the protest focused on holding Woodward accountable as the leader of UMMC. 

As UMMC employees walked past the protest to their cars — some smiled and waved, others refused to make eye contact — McCarty turned to the group. 

“Help me come up with something,” he said. “We need to call her out.” 

That’s when they began to chant: “Dr. Woodward make it right, health care is a human right.” 

Another protester noted that Woodward is the chair of the American Association of Medical Colleges, a medical organization that recently joined several others in an amicus brief opposing Kentucky’s gender-affirming care ban. 

“She is part of an organization that believes in creating safe spaces for LGBTQ people yet a decision was made recently to take away a safe space for those people — in her own hospital?” said Wiley Smith, who is on Capital City Pride’s board of directors. “That’s backward.” 

The TEAM clinic’s closure leaves LGBTQ+ Mississippians with few options in an already deserted health care landscape. The protesters knew of just two clinics — Open Arms in Jackson and Spectrum: The Other Clinic in Hattiesburg — that openly provide gender-affirming care. 

Though Spectrum provides telehealth, it’s a nearly two hour drive from Jackson, where many former TEAM Clinic patients live. And Open Arms doesn’t advertise on its website that it offers gender-affirming care. 

“This clinic is where people felt safe,” said Valencia Robinson, the executive director of Mississippi in Action. 

Love Latonia, an advocate for trans health care, said that the people who will be most affected by UMMC’s closure of the TEAM clinic are Black trans women in part because they lack the financial resources to seek care far away from where they live. 

“It’s a way to control and to target the most marginalized, because they’re an easy target,” she said, adding that lawmakers and other powerful officials in Mississippi “should focus on things that are more serious than people’s sexual orientation.” 

LGBTQ+ clinics in other states have faced a similar backlash. In Tennessee, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee paused gender-affirming care for minors last October following pressure from Republican lawmakers. Last month, the Texas Attorney General investigated two hospitals that provided gender-transition services to trans youth. 

Lochmann, who had been a patient at TEAM clinic since he was 16, said lawmakers don’t understand gender-affirming care. He had to wait a year before he could start hormone therapy. 

“It’s not like they’re just giving this care to children just because they asked,” he said. 

The clinic’s closure, Lochmann added, is yet another blow that is making it really hard to be a trans person in Mississippi right now. 

“The clinic didn’t get a say in it,” he said. “The patients didn’t get a say in it. The fact that it happened out of the blue — it just feels like a huge loss for everything. It’s just very hard to exist and feel safe as a trans person in this moment.” 

The post ‘We need to call her out’: Protesters seek to hold UMMC’s Woodward accountable for closing LGBTQ+ clinic appeared first on Mississippi Today.