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Although the 88th Texas legislative session doesn’t begin until Tuesday, several lawmakers have already zeroed in on anti-LGBTQ issues and have filed bills that aim to criminalize gender-affirming medical care offered to children.
For starters, in November Houston-area Texas State Rep. Steve Toth filed House Bill 122, which would make it harder for transgender youths to access gender-affirming health care including hormone therapies and surgical intervention. If passed into law, the bill would make such treatments a second-degree felony for medical professionals, each charge of which could carry an up to 20-year prison sentence, according to KVUE.
Toth also introduced House Bill 41, which would revoke professional liability insurance coverage from non-complying health care providers. Toth authored a similar bill in 2021, but it never made it out of the House Committee.
Other lawmakers, including Texas State Rep. Cole Hefner, seek to classify gender-affirming care as child abuse, falling in line with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal opinion released last February and Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to state agencies to begin investigating families that subjecting their children to “abusive gender-transitioning procedures.”
Hefner’s House Bill 672 proposes to criminalize the use of puberty suppressants and hormone blockers for “the purpose of gender transitioning.” Hefner also filed a similar bill in 2021 that never made it past the House Committee.
The move to curb access to these procedures and medications has drawn criticism from activist groups like Equality Texas, especially after a recent survey by the Trevor Project found that LGBTQ youths in Texas experienced higher rates of suicidal thoughts than those from other states, according to a report by Lauren McGaughy at the Dallas Morning News.
“With a Governor who is openly campaigning to end transgender health care for young people, it comes as no surprise that LGBTQ+ mental health outcomes in the state have suffered,” Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas, told McGaughy.
More than 25 major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, released statements opposing discrimination against patients seeking medical intervention to treat gender dysphoria and showing support for treatments in some specified cases. According to the Texas Medical Association, more than 20 years of evidence support the claim that gender-affirming care is best way to care for young patients with gender dysphoria.
