First free transgender clinic opens in Texas

A new clinic has opened its doors to transgender patients, in what is the first of its kind, in central Texas. The Kind Clinic is based in the state capital of Austin and aims at assisting transgender and non-binary individuals.

The non-profit clinic will not provide gender re-assignment surgery but, rather, offer high-quality full-service care at little to no cost when possible.

A recent UCLA's Williams Institute study showed that Texas had the fifth-largest transgender population in the country, behind Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Georgia. Just over 125,000 Texans identify as transgender which equates to 0.66% of the state.

Currently no such clinic exits in the central Texas area and the extension to the current Kind Surgery is expected to help the state's substantial transgender population.

It will specialise in preventing and treating sexually transmitted infection, including HIV prevention drugs.

Services are available for anyone regardless of race, gender identity or sexual orientation.

All of this will come at no cost to the patient. Any expenses not picked up by insurance will be covered by Texas Health Action.

The new clinic comes after a Texas State Senate committee passed a bill restricting the rights of transgender people to access public bathrooms labelled with the gender they identify with.

There are approximately 1.4m adults across the United States who identify as transgender, with the vast bulk of these aged between 25 and 64.