Republicans have filed dozens of bills to disrupt health care for transgender youth

Republican lawmakers in more than half the states are continuing a party-line push to restrict doctors and other medical providers from offering some gender-affirming health care to minors, even with parents’ consent.

In late January, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed legislation making the Beehive State the first this year to ban some medical interventions for patients under 18, including hormone therapy and gender-affirmation surgery. Adolescents who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria — a mismatch between their gender identity and sex assigned at birth — before the law took effect are grandfathered.

Arkansas and Tennessee passed bans on genderaffirming care for minors in 2021; Alabama and Florida also blocked such care last year. The bans in Alabama and Arkansas now are on hold as they’re tied up in the court system.

A review by the American Civil Liberties Union finds that state lawmakers have introduced at least 85 bills this session to restrict gender-affirming health care, up from 43 bills last year and 32 in 2021.

The health care push builds on GOP efforts in recent years to bar transgender girls from competing on girls sports teams; prohibit discussions of gender identity in classrooms; and remove books with transgender themes from school libraries. In some states, GOP lawmakers also have taken aim at drag performances — in which men dress as women —as harmful to children.

From state to state, many of this year’s health-related bills and public statements describe gender-affirming care as “irreversible” and “lifealtering,” and question whether science truly supports the procedures.

Generally, medical associations describe such care as including various disciplines, from pediatrics to psychiatry to endocrinology. Young patients might be seen not only by their pediatricians, counselors or family doctors, but also at specialized LGBTQ+ health care centers at major universities and medical complexes.

Puberty-blocking drugs, as well as other hormone treatments, may be offered to adolescents in some cases. Gender-affirming surgery, though rarely performed on patients under 18, may include facial reconstruction and “top” or “bottom” surgery to align facial features, breast shape and genitalia with a person’s gender.

Many U.S. medical professionals endorse puberty blockers as a safe option for adolescents struggling with gender dysphoria. By slowing the onset of puberty, the drugs can ease teens’ anxiety and give them more time to consider their identity and whether they want to pursue a more permanent medical transition. But there are growing concerns among some doctors about the longterm effects of the drugs on patients’ bone density and brain development, according to a recent investigation by The New York Times.

Research on the safety of puberty blockers is ongoing. In the meantime, England’s National Health Service recently proposed restricting the use of the drugs to research settings, and Sweden and Finland also have established new limits on their use, according to The Times.

Polls show that a rising number of Americans know someone whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth. Still, popular opinion on gender identity and gender-affirming health care is complex, according to the Pew Research Center, which last year asked a series of questions on the issue. (Stateline and the Pew Research Center are both supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts.)

Nearly half of Americans, for example, support making it illegal for medical professionals to provide health care to support gender transition for minors, according to the Pew Research Center survey last spring, while 31% said they opposed such efforts. Roughly 6 in 10 participants in the poll said they support requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth. And 38% said American society has gone too far in accepting transgender people.

But nearly two-thirds of respondents favor laws to protect transgender people in jobs, housing and public spaces.

Many of this year’s bills, filed across more than two dozen states, differ somewhat in efforts to disrupt transgender-related health care for minors. In Wyoming, for example, one bill would declare surgeries and puberty-blocking drugs to be child abuse. Another threatens to revoke medical providers’ licenses and would prohibit insurers from covering the procedures.