It’s often not easy for veterans to receive health care at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities — especially if they are not cisgender men. Not all hospitals have the equipment, or even the space, to properly treat and provide health care to women and LGBTQ+ people. There’s a shortage of specialists. And there’s the way they’re treated by staff or other patients.

Lindsay Church, a 38-year-old trans nonbinary Navy veteran, said they have dealt with a patient advocate that kept misgendering them, a security guard who laughed at them when they voiced safety concerns and once was even harassed by a VA staff member when they tried to use the bathroom. Church was at a facility in Virginia for a radiology appointment in December 2021 when they needed to use the women’s bathroom. Suddenly, a staff member started pounding on the outside wall, yelling: “Is there a man in this bathroom?”

“I was really scared,” said Church, the co-founder and executive director of Minority Veterans of America. “It left a mark on me that I’m not welcome. I don’t even go to the VA unless I’ve used the restroom before I left my house or unless I can find a single stall bathroom somewhere in there, because I don’t feel safe. And I’m not the only one.”

Church founded Minority Veterans in 2017 in response to the Trump administration’s announcement that transgender people would not be allowed to serve in the military and the administration’s Muslim ban, which temporarily barred people from seven countries, most of which were predominantly Muslim, from entering the country. One of the organization’s policy priorities is pushing to close health care access gaps by guaranteeing access to in vitro fertilization and surrogacy programs, abortion and contraception, and gender confirmation surgery through the VA.

Women and LGBTQ+ veterans have historically accounted for a small percentage of patients receiving care at VA facilities, but as their numbers have grown, so has the awareness of gender-based disparities. As of 2017, only about 1 in 3 VA clinics and hospitals had a gynecologist on staff, according to data from Disabled American Veterans, with OBGYN services — including fertility and pregnancy-related care — being even more rare. A 2020 study published in Women’s Health Issues found that there were gendered disparities specifically when it came to chronic disease management, continuity of care, inpatient services and patient experience of care at VA facilities.

Read the full article about women and LGTBQ veterans by Mariel Padilla at The19th.