Story at a glance
- The Alabama Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would prohibit transgender and nonbinary minors from receiving gender-affirming care.
- The bill now heads to the Alabama House.
- More than 200 bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community have been introduced in state legislatures this year, including more than 30 bills seeking to restrict access to gender-affirming health care.
The Alabama Senate on Wednesday approved a bill seeking to prohibit transgender and nonbinary minors from receiving gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormone-replacement therapy and surgery. It now heads to the House.
The bill, passed by Senate in a 24-6 vote, would make it a felony, punishable by up to a decade in prison, for a doctor in Alabama to prescribe puberty blockers or hormones or perform gender-affirming surgery on patients younger than 19-years-old.
“We don’t want parents to be abusing their children. We don’t want to make that an option, because that’s what it is: It’s child abuse. This is just to protect children,” the bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Shay Shelnutt, said Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.
A nearly identical bill, also sponsored by Shelnutt, was introduced in the state Senate last year, but failed to advance in March.
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Shelnutt is not the first member of the GOP to dub gender-affirming care “child abuse.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) earlier this week made headlines when he said certain types of medical care for transgender youth were considered “abuse” under Texas law.
“The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has a responsibility to act accordingly. I’ll do everything I can to protect against those who take advantage of and harm young Texans,” Paxton wrote in an opinion released Monday.
He added: “While you refer to these procedures as ‘sex changes,’ it is important to note that it remains medically impossible to truly change the sex of an individual because this is determined biologically at conception.”
More than 200 bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community have been introduced in state legislatures this year, including more than 30 bills seeking to restrict access to gender-affirming health care.
To date, just one state state — Arkansas — has passed legislation restricting access to gender-affirming services for minors, though a federal judge in July blocked its enforcement pending the outcome of an ACLU lawsuit.
A Trevor Project study published in December found that interventions like hormone therapy significantly reduce the risk of depression and suicide in transgender adolescents.
Other studies have found that receiving gender-affirming medical care earlier in life is associated with a lower risk of mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. A 2020 study published in the journal of Pediatrics found that transgender people who received puberty blockers during adolescence had a lower risk of suicidal ideation as adults.
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