For more Scandi-style progressive politics, try Missouri, Alabama, and Utah
By Michael T
Written by Genspect parent Lynn Chadwick.
Two new bills in Missouri and Alabama seek to prohibit medical procedures for minors, including hormones and surgeries for gender-questioning youth.
Missouri SB 843 reads in part, “Under this act, any physician, surgeon, nurse, or other health personnel shall be prohibited from administering any hormonal treatment or performing any surgical treatment for the purpose of gender reassignment for a child under 18. Any physician, surgeon, nurse, or other health personnel wilfully and knowingly violating or assisting in the violation of this provision shall be subject to having his or her professional license, application for a license, or authority to practice his or her profession rejected or revoked. Under this act, a person commits the offense of abuse or neglect of a child if such person coerces a child who is under 18 to undergo any surgical or hormonal treatment for the purpose of gender reassignment.”
Alabama’s SB10, titled the Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, would make it a Class-C felony to “engage in, counsel, make a referral for, or cause any of the following practices to be performed upon a minor if the practice is performed for the purpose of attempting to alter the appearance of or affirm the minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex, if that perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex.” The bill forbids the prescription of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for gender affirmation to children under the age of 18. Exceptions are made for medically verified cases of disorders of sexual development.
The Alabama bill also prohibits school officials from counseling or coercing minors to withhold information from parents and legal guardians, which has become a hot-button issue around the world, with multiple pending legal cases in Florida and Wisconsin.
Similar bills were introduced last year in Alabama and failed to pass.
A similar bill is being negotiated in Utah, H.B. 127, in which gender medicalization under age 18 would require fully informed consent and would crucially allow young patients who receive such care to sue their doctors until they turn age 30.
As previously described by Genspect:
“There is a need in the US for such legislation in the face of lax standards of care, which allow puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries with little oversight, something these other gender-forward countries [Sweden and Finland] are steering away from.
“The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) did a systematic review of both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and found the evidence “very low” (their words) in all categories that these experimental drugs actually do what they are intended to do.”
“As of May 1, Sweden’s Karolinska Hospital (part of the Karolinska Institute, which grants the Nobel Prize) and a second Swedish medical institution have stopped all new prescriptions of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for gender dysphoric minors under age 18 and will only allow their use in clinical research studies.” [Since updated to five out of six Swedish hospitals.]
Arkansas’ Save Adolescents for Experimentation Act (SAFE) Act was passed in 2021 and is currently being challenged by the ACLU. Genspect has written:
“The Arkansas bill’s cut-off age is 18, like Sweden above and also like in Finland, whose new protocol recognizes that adolescence is a time of great identity exploration and development and that many children will outgrow their gender dysphoria. Finland also does not allow any surgical treatments at all for their gender-questioning youth under the age of 18.”
While it would be ideal if clinicians and medical bodies came to the same evidence-based conclusions as Sweden, Finland, and the UK, we applaud these legislative efforts and hope that more US states will employ such Scandi-style progressive politics to protect vulnerable children.
Image credit: Pixabay, Pexels