The Texas Supreme Court allowed a new state law to go into effect Sept. 1, which bans medical transgender procedures on minors, including mutilations and puberty-blocking hormones.
Texas will be the most populous state with such restrictions on transgender procedures on children — procedures that leave the children sterilized. Nineteen states in all now ban the procedures in one way or another, while states like California and Washington have not only embraced them, but will even shelter children who want these procedures from their parents who may oppose the medical treatment.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups had sued Texas, saying Senate Bill 14 and the high court’s decision is “cruel” and calling the fight “far from over.”
In response, the 201st Judicial District Court of Travis County, Texas had earlier this year granted an injunction to pause the state’s ban on these transgender treatments.
CNN defends the transgender medical procedures, saying they are proven to be medically necessary: “Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender — the one the person was designated at birth — to their affirmed gender, the gender by which one wants to be known.”
While the conservative Texas Supreme Court lifted the injunction, the order did not address the lower court’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional. A hearing is expected on that aspect later, but in the meantime, the law will go into effect, and the court’s ruling today is seen by some as an indication of how it will rule on the underlying law.
States that have made it a felony to medically distort a child’s gender include Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Florida. Other states with laws curtailing this relatively new trend in medicine are Mississippi, Indiana, and Iowa, while a handful of states have laws barring state funding or the use of state property for the procedures on children.
Some states have passed laws that allow those children already undergoing hormone treatment to either continue those, or has a provision ordering doctors to systematically reduce their prescriptions to wean them off of the hormones.
The Mississippi law also allows people who underwent these procedures to later sue doctors for doing the transgender work on them, giving patients a 30-year statute of limitations to do so.
Alaska has no protections for children and youth against the doctors who are taking advantage of them for profit or because of some underlying belief that children would be better off sterilized. The Anchorage clinic run by Identity Inc. was highlighted by Heath Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine for its work to convert children to a transgender life, and Rep. Mary Peltola publicly supports the gender “reassignment” of children through puberty blockers and surgeries.
