researchers asked 372 people who started hormones as teens if they regret it. 360 said no.

Photo: UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, for illustration. Nightryder84, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The argument for banning hormone therapy for trans kids rests on one word, regret. A new study in JAMA Pediatrics, published Nov. 9, went and asked.

The researchers, led by Laura Kuper of the psychiatry department at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, surveyed former patients who had started estrogen or testosterone as youth at a single multidisciplinary gender clinic in the US. The surveys ran from October 2023 to October 2025. Respondents were 14 to 28 years old, and on average they had started treatment 4.9 years earlier.

Of the 372 who completed the regret scale, 360 (96.8%) said hormone therapy was the right decision. Ten (2.7%) reported regret. Seven (1.9%) reported feeling harmed. The median regret score, on a scale of 0 to 100, was zero.

The paper does not hide the harder numbers. Regret scores were higher among people no longer taking hormones, about 17% of the group, and among nonbinary respondents. Age at starting treatment made no difference. The authors conclude the results support "existing standards of care," and the Advocate, running a Them story, quotes them saying the findings "do not support efforts to categorically restrict or ban access."

Critics on X were already circling the survey's response rate on Wednesday, a figure the published abstract does not report, so we are not printing anyone's number for it. Fair questions are fair. They are also, notably, more questions than anyone asked before passing the bans.