“The solution for children’s identification with the opposite sex isn’t to poison their bodies with megadoses of the wrong hormones, to chemically or surgically castrate and sterilize them, or to remove healthy breasts and reproductive organs,” Rep. Fred Deutsch, South Dakota House of Representatives
At least six states are trying to restrict kids from getting gender reassignment treatments
January 22, 2020
CNN – State lawmakers can’t stop fighting about the rights of their transgender citizens:
- Their access to bathrooms.
- The sports they can play in school.
- Whether businesses can turn them away because of their gender identity.
But they’ve never weighed restrictions to transgender healthcare that are this extreme.
Since the start of the 2020 legislative session, at least six states have proposed to restrict transgender minors’ access to gender reassignment treatments, including surgery and hormone therapy.
Some bills would make it illegal for physicians to administer the treatments. Others would classify the act as child abuse.
The number of states contemplating whether to restrict transgender youths’ access to healthcare is “unusual,” said Ryan Thoreson, a Yale Law School lecturer and an LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
No states have enacted a blanket ban on gender reassignment treatment for transgender minors. But the sheer volume of proposals this legislative session is concerning, he said.
“There are alarming signals that things like this could pass in conservative states,” Thoreson told CNN.
The first vote happens this week
The first vote happened Wednesday in South Dakota.
The bill would make it a misdemeanor for physicians or any medical professionals to perform gender reassignment surgeries on minors or provide patients 16 and younger with hormones, even if the minor is emancipated.
Of the 105 members of South Dakota’s state legislature, nearly half of them sponsored the bill.
It advanced in the South Dakota House Affairs Committee by a vote of 8-5, Thoreson said, and moves to the floor next.
“The solution for children’s identification with the opposite sex isn’t to poison their bodies with megadoses of the wrong hormones, to chemically or surgically castrate and sterilize them, or to remove healthy breasts and reproductive organs,” Rep. Fred Deutsch, the bill’s primary sponsor, said in a statement to CNN … Read more.
