In the pipe: First anti-transgender bill of 2023
Tennessee lawmakers introduced a measure to prohibit transgender youth under 18 from accessing gender-affirming health care just one day after the U.S. midterm elections.
The bill, titled the Protecting Children from Gender Mutilation Act, would prohibit medical providers from prescribing puberty blockers, which delay puberty to allow children who are transgender or grappling with their gender to determine their gender identity.
The bill would also prohibit gender-affirming hormones and surgery. While gender-affirming surgeries for children are not recommended under prevailing standards of care and are exceptionally rare, interventions to delay puberty are more common and are critically important for the mental and physical health of many transgender people.
If ultimately approved in the state’s GOP-dominated General Assembly, it would allow children to later sue their parents for providing them such treatment and subject doctors to punishment up to a generation after knowingly violating the law.
The state legislature is set to meet next in January.
Lamberth, Johnson, and Walsh vs. Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Tennessee Majority Leaders Rep. William Lamberth, R-Portland, and Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, introduced the proposal.
“Cultural forces from the left would like us to accept an alarming new myth; that gender is not a biological reality,” Lamberth wrote in an October op-ed in the Tennessean announcing his intent to introduce the bill.
Both lawmakers said their decision to propose the law was based, in part, on a social medial campaign launched this fall by the Daily Wire and Contributor Matt Walsh that alleged Vanderbilt University Medical Center was providing gender-affirming care as a “money-making scheme.”
Social media posts from Walsh claiming that Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee “chemically castrates” minors went viral earlier this year, spurring Gov. Bill Lee (R) to call for an investigation into the hospital’s transgender clinic. Lee also won reelection in the recent midterms.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center has accused Walsh of misrepresenting facts about the care provided to young transgender patients. Last month, the hospital announced it would be pausing gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth for up to several months while it conducts a review.
Vanderbilt also declined to comment on the proposed legislation.
‘A dangerous intrusion’
The Tennessee legislature has been particularly hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) young people and Tennessee’s bill is the first anti-LGBT bill filed for state legislative sessions in 2023 following the midterm elections.
Other states have also sought to implement similar restrictions. Alabama, Arkansas, and Arizona have all banned different forms of gender-affirming care
The American Medical Association, along with other leading professional groups, has strongly opposed restrictions on gender-affirming care and called such bans,” a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine.”
In that 2021 statement, the association noted, “Empirical evidence has demonstrated that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression. For gender-diverse individuals, standards of care and accepted medically-necessary services that affirm gender or treat gender dysphoria may include mental health counseling, non-medical social transition, gender-affirming hormone therapy, and/or gender-affirming surgeries.”