Several states have banned or restricted cross-sex hormones, transgender surgeries, and puberty blockers in some capacity as of Aug. 30, though some bans are currently held up in court.
Twenty-two states have passed laws restricting transgender treatments for minors — Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Not all states are able to enforce these laws, as courts decide their constitutionality.
Former Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a law in March 2022 which prohibits “irreversible gender reassignment surgery to any individual who is under eighteen years of age.” Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs issued an executive order a little over a year later that prohibited “conversion therapy,” which the order defines as “any practice or treatment that seeks or purports to change an individual’s non-heteronormative sexual orientation or non-cisgender identity.” That same day, Hobbs also signed an order mandating that taxpayer-funded state employee healthcare insurance cover “medically-necessary gender-affirming surgery.”
Arkansas became the first state to ban transgender surgeries and hormones in April 2021, overturning a veto by Republican then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson. In June 2023, U.S. District Judge Jay Moody struck down the law, arguing that it violated the due process and equal protection rights of children who identify as transgender. Earlier that same year, in February, a bill making it easier for patients to sue doctors who provided them with transgender surgeries and hormones became law. (RELATED: CPAC Pressuring Every GOP Office To Support Bill Banning Gender Surgeries On Minors)
“In an ideal world, the professional medical organizations would themselves put a stop the ghoulish experimental interventions on kids euphemistically called ‘gender affirming care,'” Jay Richards, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller. “But in the real world of 2023, many medical organizations have been captured by trendy gender ideology. As a result, state governments have done the right thing in trying to protect children within their jurisdiction.”
It is a felony punishable by up to a decade in prison for doctors to perform transgender surgeries or offer cross-sex hormones to minors in Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Alabama and Florida.
A judge has allowed the enforcement of an Alabama law banning sex changes for minors.
The court argues that parent’s rights do not necessarily include, “the right to give one’s children puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone treatment.”@DailyCaller https://t.co/p988NQU6su
— Sarah Weaver (@SarahHopeWeaver) August 22, 2023
Preliminary injunctions are in effect against sex change bans in Florida, Georgia and Indiana. A court temporarily blocked a ban in Texas, but the state attorney general appealed it, meaning the injunction has been automatically suspended.
“Activists on the other side are challenging these laws — of course — and it will take some time for the cases to be decided. One or more will likely end up at the Supreme Court before it’s all over,” Richards said. “But by that time, it will be probably be obvious to all but the most committed gender ideologues that we should not be putting troubled kids on the pathway to sterilization. Indeed, I would expect that in a few years, the pediatric gender clinics will close their doors because of rising costs from civil suits. They need to be sued into oblivion. And given the number of young people they are currently exploiting, that day can’t come soon enough.”
Opponents of these bills argue that cross-sex hormones, sex change surgeries and puberty blockers are “medically necessary” and that transgender-identifying kids will experience severe consequences if denied these treatments.
“By preventing doctors from providing this care, or threatening to take children away from parents who support their child in their transition, these bills prevent transgender youth from accessing medically necessary, safe health care backed by decades of research and supported by every major medical association representing over 1.3 million US doctors,” the Human Rights Campaign claims.
While the U.S. medical establishment strongly supports transgender treatments for children, multiple European countries have curtailed the practice, having concluded that the harms outweigh the benefits.