When it comes to trans rights, we’ve had a real, real rough of it in recent months especially. To be clear, the United States has consistently failed trans people (and LGBTQ+ people more broadly), but a conservative onslaught of anti-trans legislation has dominated the lives of queer people in the last year especially. Whether it’s trans girls playing girls’ sports, trans people of any age using the bathroom, or trans people wanting to update their birth certificates, Republicans have been happy to see just what other conservative lawmakers will go along with when it comes to lawmaking on the state level. Anything to get people heated and distracted for midterms, right?
But as of Wednesday, March 16, we do have something to celebrate. A heinously discriminatory anti-trans bill in Idaho has died in the state Senate, as reported by Reuters. The bill, HB 675, sought to bar trans youth from accessing safe, age-appropriate, gender-affirming medical care by making it a felony to provide it. It also sought to prevent parents or guardians from helping a trans youth leave the state to seek such care elsewhere.
Related: Idaho bill seeks to send physicians to jail for life if they provide gender-affirming care to youth
In a statement on Tuesday, Idaho Senate Republicans said they believe the bill interferes with another recent rallying cry out of the GOP: parental rights. The Republicans stressed that they’re still against gender-affirming surgeries on minors (which are not generally done, anyway), but that they feel this legislation counters the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their children.
“We believe in parents’ rights,” the statement reads. “And that the best decisions regarding medical treatment options for children are made by parents, with the benefit of their physician’s advice and expertise.” I would disagree here and argue that physicians and the patient—even if they are a minor—should be behind medical decisions, but anyway.
“The bill’s language in its current form could be interpreted to extend into the realm of medically necessary care for kids that is in no way related to transgender therapy,” the statement notes. “But serves children with highly specialized medical needs.” I don’t appreciate the framing here, as gender-affirming care is lifesaving care, but I digress.
Is this a victory? Yes! Or at least a relative one. But this legislation is not alone in its extremity or its hatefulness. For example, as Daily Kos has covered, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott recently directed state agencies to investigate families whose children receive gender-affirming care; a judge put a temporary block against such investigations, but numerous families say investigators have already visited their homes as it is.
Bree Ladimer, an openly trans woman who is a student at Boise State University, told local outlet KTVB she is worried the bill would have a deeply negative impact on trans youth if signed into law. Ladimer pointed out that once trans youth go to their parents, doctors, and counselors saying they know who they are and they know what they want, it’s important to listen and take that seriously, or else many trans youth won’t make it to adulthood.
"Once you go through therapy, you figure out all these different things about yourself,” Ladimer told the outlet in part, saying, “things finally start making sense in hindsight.”
And more broadly, other states have fiddled with banning gender-affirming health care for youth one way or another. In Alabama, for example, Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for physicians or clinics to provide gender-affirming health care to youth. That bill would be voted on in the Alabama House in March. In terms of trans health care overall, a number of states—including Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and more—are weighing such measures now.
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