The Texas Senate tentatively approved a bill Monday in an 18-13 vote that would classify providing gender affirming health care to transgender minors as child abuse — just one of the Legislature’s many attempts to prevent transgender children from transitioning before their 18th birthday.
Senate Bill 1646 is among several other bills that advocacy groups say erode the rights of transgender Texans. Authored by Lubbock Republican Sen. Charles Perry, it amends the definition of abuse under Texas Family Code to include administering or consenting to a child’s use of puberty suppression treatment, hormones or surgery for the purpose of gender transitioning.
But it’s unclear what the legislation’s chances are in the House, where another major bill targeting transgender children appears to have stalled.
In a Senate committee hearing, SB 1646 attracted over four-and-a-half hours of public testimony from LGBTQ Texans, their parents and several state and national medical associations opposing the bill’s intrusion into intimate medical decisions. Social workers also testified the bill could put more transgender children into the foster care system, where they face elevated rates of suicide and depression.
Perry argued in floor debate that the bill was necessary to prevent children from making irreversible decisions that they may regret later, but experts say both of those claims are questionable.
According to Marjan Linnell, a general pediatrician, puberty suppression treatments are completely reversible and have been used for decades to delay early onset puberty. While other treatments such as hormones and surgery may cause irreversible changes, Linnell said the risks are discussed extensively with children and their parents before the procedures, which is typically only performed after puberty.
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The Senate is set to take their final vote on the bill Wednesday. It previously passed Senate Bill 29, legislation that would force transgender students to participate in school sports based on the sex originally labeled on their birth certificate.
That bill has been sitting in a House committee since the Chair Harold Dutton, D-Houston, told the Houston Chronicle its identical House companion bill likely didn’t have the votes to make it to the full lower chamber.
See here and here for some background. While SB29 could be assigned to the Public Education committee, which is why it is bottled up, SB1646 likely will be assigned to a committee that is Republican-dominated, and thus like HB1399 it will likely advance to the House floor. From there, anything can happen.
I think we all know how I feel about this, so let me cite a couple of worthwhile tweets and call it a day.
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Today: American Medical Association urged governors to oppose state legislation that would prohibit medically necessary gender transition-related care for minor patients, calling such efforts “a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine.” #txlege— Jessica Shortall (@jessicashortall) 2:13 PM – 27 April 2021
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Whitmire: “Where did you gain your knowledge of this topic? I live and work with the transgender community and I’m still learning and I’m tot an expert, but you stand up here like you know what you’re talking about.”
#txlege
— Chuck Lindell (@chucklindell) 1:27 PM – 27 April 2021
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