Florida State Rep. Anna Eskamani said during a Wednesday hearing that teen girls will be compelled to cut off their own breasts if they are not offered sex change operations.
The Florida legislature is currently considering a bill that would ban doctors from providing sex change surgeries, cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers to minors, as well as prohibit the use of Medicaid funds to finance the treatments. (RELATED: New Bill Won’t Require Parental Notification For Runaway Minors Receiving ‘Gender Affirming Treatment’)
“Surgery is very, very rare for those under the age of 18,” Eskamani said. “When it does happen, these are children who are going to cut off their own breasts if we don’t help them. They are wrapping bands around their chest so tight that they can’t breath.”
“And so please, try to put yourself into the shoes of those impacted. Ignore the moral panic that has been manufactured many times by right wing media and integrated into political campaigns.”
Instead of seeing this as a mental health issue to be treated with counseling when a teen is so distressed she wants to self-harm by cutting her breasts off, this FL lawmaker says surgeons should be able to cut them off for her. No words. #donoharm pic.twitter.com/e4jDXpH46A
— January Littlejohn (@JanuaryDoNoHarm) April 20, 2023
Transgender activists were filmed throwing underwear at Florida lawmakers Tuesday as legislators advanced the bill. The demonstrators were later removed from the building. The underwear bore messages reading “leave my genitals alone” and “not your business.”
Protesters swarmed the Florida capital in March to protest a bill which required bathrooms in schools be used in accordance with biological sex. The bill defines a woman as a “person belonging, at birth, to the biological sex which has the specific reproductive role of producing eggs.”