Missouri Considers Forcing Detransition On Incarcerated Trans People

The targets of gender affirming care bans are changing. A new bill that just passed committee in Missouri would force detransition on incarcerated tarns adults as well as trans youth.

Missouri has been the site of some of the most vicious battles over transgender rights in recent years. In 2022, a trans healthcare ban and trans sports ban came just short of passing after time ran out over a fight about redistricting. In those debates, transgender people were openly compared to “an infection” by sitting legislators. This year, the pace of anti-trans bills has increased, with sometimes as many as 8 anti-trans bills being heard in a single day. Now, one of the gender affirming care bans for trans youth that passed out of committee was amended with a new provision: the forced medical detransition of incarcerated transgender people.

The new amendment contained carveouts to HB419, which bans gender affirming care for transgender youth. Legislators removed language that involved continuing hormones if withdrawing them meant a threat to the life of the child - explicitly voting through an amendment that removed protections for the life of the kid. Republicans also added a new line that has never been before seen in anti-trans legislation: that any correctional facility would no longer provide gender affirming care to those incarcerated.

See the amendment here:

Amendment to HB419

The withdrawal of gender affirming care for incarcerated people is especially alarming, considering that Missouri is also considering several bills that target drag artists and transgender performers. In the hearing over those bills, Representative Mazzie Boyd (R), one of the anti-drag bill sponsors, stated that she knew it targeted transgender people and any gender nonconforming person performing regardless of explicit sexualization and seemed to agree with that end goal. When asked later if she considered drag in and of itself sexually explicit, she stated yes. It is conceivable that, should both bills pass, Missouri could legalize arresting transgender people for doing anything considered “performance” and forcing their medical detransition.

Even if the drag bills do not pass, transgender people are often overly incarcerated. Lambda Legal reports that 1 in 6 transgender people and 1 in 2 black transgender people have been incarcerated at some point in their life. Due to extremely high homelessness rates, mental health care inadequacies, and enforcement of anti-sex-worker laws, transgender people are more likely to end up in jail. Bills like this would result in their state-mandated withdrawal of care.

Activists have been sounding the alarm on how attacks on transgender people have been creeping steadily beyond their origins. Just 3 years ago, the main kind of bill anti-trans proponents pushed were sports bans. Increasingly, we have seen attacks on healthcare - not just of trans youth but trans adults. Florida’s AHCA under Governor Ron DeSantis forced through a new provision pulling Medicaid coverage for gender affirming care from transgender adults just a few months ago. We have seen numerous bills that target transgender people up to the age of 21 and even 26. Just this week, we’ve even seen our first trans adult bathroom ban proposed since 2016 in Arkansas: a ban that would charge trans adults with sex crimes for entering bathrooms where a minor is present.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the anti-trans attacks were never about sports and were never about kids. I covered the history of the how trans bans moved from sports to attacks on transgender people in all aspects of life in a recent newsletter. In an interview with the New York Times, organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the American Principles Project explicitly advocated an end to all gender affirming care. Now, lawyers like Vernadette Broyles, who has worked with the Alliance Defending Freedom, are spinning up fake controversies around gender clinics to spur on new legislation targeting trans kids and adults.

This bill passed through the House Judiciary Committee in Missouri on an 8-5-1 vote. It will now go to the general House floor. Similar bills are moving through the Missouri Senate, and it remains to be seen if similar amendments are added on the Senate side as well. Should this bill pass, it will be one of the most cruel care bans we have seen in any state, and certainly one of the bans with the most troubling implications.