Transgender youth have equal chance of pregnancy as their non-transgender peer: study

It’s well known that the level of awareness about transgender people in society at large is negligible and this is why several misunderstandings about them prevail. A very common misconception about transgender youth is that chances of pregnancy are low among them.

But now a study has dispelled this myth by discovering that the risk of pregnancy among transgender youth is the same as non-transgender youth. Data for the study was taken from a 2014 Canadian Transgender Youth Health Survey, and observed 540 youth aged between 14 and 25.

Five percent were found to have been pregnant at least once, which was the same as British Columbia’s overall pregnancy rate for sexually active young people.

Lead author of the study Jaimie Veale said that, “It’s often assumed that trans youth don’t get pregnant or get someone pregnant, perhaps because they’re receiving hormones that tend to reduce fertility, or because people assume they aren’t sexually active.”

The study emphasises the need for better sex education and sexual health care for transgender youth, and mentioned that clinicians should educate transgender youth to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and SITs.