Texas GOP Lawmakers Pass Bill Banning Transgender Medical Care

Texas lawmakers voted on Wednesday to approve a bill, Senate Bill 14, banning hormone and puberty blocking treatments, as well as surgeries for transgender children (which don’t happen). Once SB 14 is signed into law, Texas will become the largest state to ban transition medical care for minors. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1659000628121681920 From the New York Times:

The final version of the bill included a limited exemption for those transgender children who were already receiving medical treatment before the bill’s passage, though it also required those patients to “wean” themselves off the medications over an unspecified period of time.

The bill would prohibit a doctor from performing mastectomies or surgeries that would sterilize a child or remove otherwise healthy tissue or body parts, or from prescribing drugs that would induce transient or permanent infertility. It now heads to the governor’s desk.

SB 14 was vigorously opposed by Democrats and LGBTQ advocates leading up to the final vote. At least 14 states have passed some form of restriction on gender-affirming care now. Also today, the State House voted to advance a bill requiring athletes participating in sports at public colleges to compete based on the sex assigned on their birth certificate. Last year, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state’s child protective agency to investigate the parents of trans kids for “child abuse” if their children was receiving such treatment. The Williams Institute, a research center that studies the demographics relating to the LGBTQ community, estimates nearly 30,000 transgender children between 13 and 17 live in Texas. https://twitter.com/alexnguyen2311/status/1658991156431142914