“On April 6, 2021, Arkansas became the first state to ban gender-affirming health care for minors. Yet there are more than a dozen proposed bills in state legislatures intended to effect the same changes, and the next bill may not generate the same uproar.
“For one thing, it won’t be quite as new. With each bill, and each cycle of outrage, the thought of children being hurt won’t shock us quite so much. Many of the cisgender people who were passionate about this case will turn their attention to some other, fresher outrage; every partial victory will feel like proof they’ve won and permission to move on.”
(Jude Ellison Sady Doyle. “Arkansas' transgender law makes it America's worst state for trans kids.” Think. April 07, 2021.)
The bill in Arkansas was vetoed, but the General Assembly voted to overrule the governor, making the state the first to ban gender-affirming treatments and surgery for transgender youth. Chase Strangio at the American Civil Liberties Union has already promised legal action against the Arkansas bill, but the groups mobilizing to prevent these children’s transitions are not going to stop with one defeat, or even one big victory.
As part of a new culture war, similar bills have been introduced in at least 20 other states: in some cases, doctors could go to jail. Erica Anderson, a highly respected gender psychologist at the University of California San Francisco who is transgender herself, believes it's a clear overreach on the part of such legislatures. Anderson reported, “Clearly, they are demonstrating their ignorance and prejudice.” At least six major medical associations have weighed in against these bills, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Jude Ellison Sady Doyle, author of Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock and Fear... and Why, said:
“If Arkansas is currently the worst state in America for trans kids, it won’t be for long. This is not about who is “right.” If facts could win this, trans people and their allies would be winning. 'Transition,' for children, is not some risky medical decision entailing hormones and surgery. For the most part, it isn’t a medical decision at all; most trans children only need appropriate outfits and haircuts, and teens will also take fully reversible puberty blockers until they’re old enough to decide on surgery.”
(Jude Ellison Sady Doyle. “Arkansas' transgender law makes it America's worst state for trans kids.” Think. April 07, 2021.)
And now, the American Medical Association (AMA) has urged governors to oppose state legislation that would prohibit medically necessary gender transition-related care for minor patients, calling such efforts “a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine.”
In a letter to the National Governors Association (NGA), the AMA cited evidence that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression, and that forgoing gender-affirming care can have tragic health consequences, both mental and physical.
The AMA wrote in its letter …
“Decisions about medical care belong within the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship. As with all medical interventions, physicians are guided by their ethical duty to act in the best interest of their patients and must tailor recommendations about specific interventions and the timing of those interventions to each patient’s unique circumstances.
“Such decisions must be sensitive to the child’s clinical situation, nurture the child’s short and long-term development, and balance the need to preserve the child’s opportunity to make important life choices autonomously in the future. We believe it is inappropriate and harmful for any state to legislatively dictate that certain transition-related services are never appropriate and limit the range of options physicians and families may consider when making decisions for pediatric patients.”
(James L. Madara, MD. CEO and EVP, American Medical Association. “AMA to states: Stop interfering in health care of transgender children.” American Medical Association. April 26, 2021.)
In these states, Republicans are pushing sweeping bans on trans youth healthcare. Proponents of the healthcare bans argue that kids are too young to consent to treatments like hormone therapy and puberty blockers and that the bills aim to prevent “medical experimentation” on children. Some bills claim that trans kids “will outgrow” their identities.
(Sam Levin. “'It helps me be myself': trans kids on the healthcare Republicans want to deny them.” The Guardian. March 24, 2021.)
The Arkansas bill is part of a larger, carefully coordinated campaign by the far right and religious conservatives to attack trans people in the wake of their failures to stop marriage equality and pass anti-trans bathroom bills over the past decade. These bills, along with a coordinated distraction of other bills seeking to ban trans girls and women from girls’ and women’s interscholastic and collegiate sports, have taken a serious toll on a trans community that is simply trying to live their lives without conservative lawmakers issuing diktats from their capitols.
Lawmaker after conservative lawmaker has used the debates over these bills to not-so-coyly push their opinion that trans kids should not legally exist. This bevy of legislation relies heavily on misinformation and negative tropes about transgender people, and flies in the face of medical advice.
(Katelyn Burns. “The GOP’s attack on trans kids’ health care, explained.” Vox. March 31,, 2021.)
In 27 states so far, Republican legislators have filed bills to restrict the rights of trans kids, either to play sports or to get medical treatment or both. Many are similar to the Arkansas bill. some go even further.
A bill filed in North Carolina would require that any government agent – including teachers or any other public school officials – “immediately notify, in writing, each of the minor’s parents, guardians, or custodians” if a minor exhibited “gender nonconformity.”
In another action, the Texas Senate passed a bill on April 27 in an 18-12 vote that would classify providing gender affirming health care to transgender minors as child abuse – just one of the Legislature’s many attempts to prevent transgender children from transitioning before their 18th birthday. But it’s unclear what the legislation’s chances are in the House, where another major bill targeting transgender children appears to have stalled.
(Megan Munce. “Gender-affirming medical treatment for transgender kids would be considered child abuse under Texas Senate bill." The Texas Tribune. April 27, 2021.)
And, here, in my state, Ohio Republicans have joined in a national wave of conservative legislatures proposing legislation to ban transgender girls from women’s high school and collegiate sports, a move LGBTQ advocates characterize as thinly veiled bullying for political points.
Of about 400,000 Ohio high school athletes, five transgender girls opted this school year to follow their gender identity and compete in women’s sports.\
Ohio High School Athletic Association policy, developed with experts from Nationwide Children’s Hospital, allows transgender girls to compete if they have either undergone a year of hormone therapy, or obtained special permission from the school athletic director who finds they harbor no distinct physical or physiological advantage over the other athletes.
Kristin Ronai, OHSAA’s director of compliance, said there’s no evidence of transgender girls taking scholarship opportunities away from anyone.
(Jake Zuckerman. “Ohio Republicans push bill to ban 5 transgender athletes from women’s sports.” WTOL 11. May 04, 2021.)
Paul Waldman of The Washington Post writes …
“Just as then, there’s a constituency for their new war on trans kids. Social change is happening rapidly, and for many people it can be disorienting. They’re suddenly confronted with questions they never contemplated and demands that they use unfamiliar or confusing language …
“Then in the midst of that uncertainty they’re preyed upon by politicians looking for political advantage and media figures looking for ratings and advertising dollars. 'You fear change, don’t you?' they’re told. 'Doesn’t it seem like the world is passing you by? Now take that uncertainty and fear, and squeeze it between your fists until it turns into hate.'
“Nobody knows better than a contemporary conservative how good that can feel to their audiences. It banishes all that uncertainty. It clarifies everything. Instead of being left behind by history, you’re cast as a hero, noble and principled and brave, fighting to save all that is good and right.
“Most despicable of all, Republicans claim to be helping trans kids by targeting and stigmatizing and victimizing them. Kids who are so vulnerable, their lives made so difficult not just by their struggles with their own bodies but by the way the people and institutions around them can make everything worse.”
Paul Waldman. “Opinion: The Republican Party’s loathsome new war on trans kids. The Washington Post. April 07, 2021.)
“They (Arkansas legistature) would deny them live-saving, appropriate health care not because it’s good public policy but because politicians believe that it will bring them more power. We need to remember that these are children. All children deserve to have access to the support and health care they need to live happy and healthy lives.”
– Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, Deputy Executive Director for the the National Center for Transgender Equality
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