Texas to ban gender-swap care for young
TEXAS is to become the largest US state to ban gendertransitioning medical care for children, including for those who have already begun the process.
The Republican-majority Texas Legislature passed a bill on Wednesday that will block anyone under the age of 18 from having hormone and puberty-blocking treatments, as well as surgeries.
The bill requires teenage patients who have begun transitioning to “wean” themselves off any medication. It has now gone to Greg Abbott, the Republican Governor, who previously ordered child welfare officials to investigate such treatments as abuse, for approval.
Doctors in Texas will be prohibited from prescribing drugs that would induce infertility, as well as from performing mastectomies or surgeries that would sterilise a child or remove otherwise healthy body parts.
Texas is poised to join 17 other states that have implemented similar bans.
It is a felony to provide gender-transition care in Alabama, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota and Oklahoma.
Medics have voiced their opposition to the bill impeding access to gender-affirming care.
Six healthcare associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in 2021 that they were “strongly opposed to any legislation or regulation that would interfere with the provision of evidence-based patient care for any patient”.
This means “genderdiverse individuals” must receive gender-affirming care, they added.
A Washington Post poll found that the majority of Americans are against trans children receiving pubertyblocking medications and hormonal treatments.
The bill is one of several proposals concerning trans rights that the Texas Legislature is considering. The State House voted on Wednesday to advance a measure mandating athletes at public colleges to compete at the sex written on their birth certificate at the time of birth.
It led to protests that saw two people arrested as the Texas House of Representatives discussed the bill.
Last year, Mr Abbott directed Texas’s child protective agency to investigate parents for child abuse if their children received gender-affirming medical care.