FISM News

Texas passes bill banning gender mutilation on minors

by Jacob Fuller

Trey Paul, FISM News 

The Texas legislature passed a bill that will ban “gender-affirming” medical procedures on minors.

The legislation (SB14), which is on its way to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, would bar transgender children from undergoing surgeries and accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapies. Children who are already receiving these types of treatments would have to be “weaned off” in a “medically appropriate” manner, according to the bill.

Senator Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels), who is also an emergency room physician, co-authored the bill. Her co-author, Senator Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola) celebrated the bill’s passage by tweeting: “Child mutilation or sterilization is never the answer and this bill will protect Texas children from these awful procedures.”

Other members of the Republican-controlled legislature in Texas who support the bill feel strongly they are protecting kids who may later regret receiving gender modification treatments.

“We are the Legislature. Our job is to protect people,” Sen. Bob Hall (R-Edgewood) said. “We protect children against lots of things. We don’t let them smoke. We don’t let them drink. We don’t let them buy lottery cards. And so, we are doing the right thing.”

Before the Texas House passed and returned SB14 to the Senate on Monday, the bill’s key sponsor in the lower chamber-Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress)-passionately supported the legislation. “Let me begin to say that there is no high-quality scientific evidence that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries help children,” he said.

The bill also received support from some Democrats, including Rep. Shawn Thierry (D-Houston), who wants to raise the age to 18 for gender modification and surgeries. “As a thoughtful legislator, mother, woman of faith and child advocate, I am making a decision to place the safety and well-being of all young people over the comfort of political expediency,” she said on the Texas House floor.

Rep. Thierry, who would later be censured by her own party for her support of the bill, shared a statement on Twitter detailing why she feels the way she does about SB14.

“As a nation, most adults have been united in at least one basic premise-that children deserve special protections and exceptional treatment under the law,” she wrote.

As a legislative body in Texas, Democrats and Republicans alike, have routinely enacted legislation which shields children from acts which place them at an increased risk of harm. This principle is established in many areas of public health policy such as restricting the age to 18 for tattoo services, tanning bed treatments, and in raising the age to 21 to purchase tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes. These policies and regulations are in place because we recognize children should be protected from actions and activities which have harmful health risks, or lifelong consequences. This same logic must apply when approaching the very complex issue of treating gender and body dysphoria in children.

Rep. Thierry also voted in favor of HB 900, which some critics say is attempting to erase LGBTQ books and black stories.

SB14 would make Texas one of more than a dozen states, including most recently Florida, that restrict the mutilation of kids.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed off on a bill that bans transgender care for minors as well as a law that bans transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms in public facilities that don’t align with their biological sex.

Gov. Abbott is expected to sign off on SB14 ensuring that it would go into effect September 1.

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