This article was originally published by Them.
Texas has enacted a ban on transition-related healthcare for minors, making it the largest state to restrict such care.
Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 14 into law on Friday, with an effective date of September 1. The law bars trans kids from getting puberty blockers and hormones, as well as transition-related surgeries for kids (but those are already extremely rare). Trans minors who are currently receiving gender-affirming care will be required to wean off hormones or puberty blockers, effectively being forced to detransition. Medical professionals who are found “guilty” of providing gender-affirming care to minors will have their licenses revoked, according to the text of the bill. Last but not least, the bill bans insurance coverage and the use of public funds for transition-related care for minors.
This follows Texas’ effort last year to define transition related care for minors as “child abuse,” with state agencies ordered to investigate parents of trans children accordingly. While that effort is currently blocked in court, SB 14 means a formal ban on that care is now officially on the books. In addition to being the largest state to pass a trans healthcare ban, Texas also has one of the largest documented populations of trans youth in the country. The Williams Institute, an LGBTQ+-focused research center at UCLA, estimates the population of trans youth ages 13-17 in Texas at 29,800, or 1.42% of the state’s population.
Advocates immediately slammed the ban. Val Benavidez, the executive director of the advocacy organization Texas Freedom Network, called the passage of the bill “truly a dark day in Texas.”
“This move will undoubtedly cost Texans their lives and solidify his legacy as one of the most violently transphobic governors in the nation,“ Benavidez said in a statement provided to Them. She added that the consequences of the bill would be “fatal,” and called it “an indefensible intrusion by the government into private healthcare decisions that should stay between patients, doctors, and loving families.”
“This bill exposes the utter hypocrisy of the right and shows that they will violate our personal freedoms and civil liberties to serve their culture wars at all costs,” Benavidez said. “While the governor and his extremist allies spout hate and sew division, they avoid tackling real threats to our children, like gun violence. We refuse to be distracted from their party’s myriad controversies. Greg Abbott will go down in history as an enemy to LGBTQIA+ Texans who needlessly put our children’s lives at risk.”
Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Texas, and Transgender Law Center pledged to file a lawsuit against SB 14 when the Texas legislature passed it earlier this month. In a statement, the legal organizations wrote that Texas lawmakers were “hellbent on joining the growing roster of states determined to jeopardize the health and lives of transgender youth, in direct opposition to the overwhelming body of scientific and medical evidence supporting this care as appropriate and necessary.”
“Transgender youth in Texas deserve the support and care necessary to give them the same chance to thrive as their peers,” the organizations wrote. “Medically necessary health care is a critical part of helping transgender adolescents succeed in school, establish healthy relationships with their friends and family, and live authentically as themselves. We will defend the rights of transgender youth in court, just as we have done in other states engaging in this anti-science and discriminatory fear-mongering.”
The ACLU of Texas reaffirmed that it would be taking legal action against SB 14 Friday, and emphasized that the law does not go into effect until September 1. “We are doing everything in our power to preserve access to this life-saving, evidence-based health care beyond that date,” it tweeted.
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