More States File Bills To Force Medical Detransition On Trans People - Kentucky and Kansas

Oklahoma shocked medical providers and the transgender community by filing a bill to ban gender affirming care. This morning, we have learned two more states seek to do the same.

Yesterday, two more states saw bills to ban gender affirming care and force transgender people to medically detransition: Kansas and Kentucky. This comes after Oklahoma shocked medical providers and the transgender community by proposing that all transgender people under the age of 26 be withdrawn from hormones—a step that causes medical detransition in transgender people. Kentucky’s HB120 would set the age of withdrawal and banning of care to 18 years old and Kansas’ SB12 would set the age at 21 years old, adding adults to their ban and medical detransition bill. The cruelty in these bills are immense and they represent a significant and continued escalation in the legislative targeting of transgender people by the far right.

Kentucky’s bill is most similar to the misleadingly named “Save Adolescents From Experimentation” acts. These acts seek to ban gender affirming care for trans youth and all consist of very similar language. These acts are pushed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, the American Principles Project, and the Coalition for Christian Virtue among other right wing organizations. They are also joined by anti-science organizations that pretend to be “moderate” such as Genspect, which has called for an end to gender affirming care up to 25 years old. Kentucky has also released other anti-trans bills that will be heard this year such as a bill that would declare transgender people in bathrooms an “emergency” and call them dangerous as well as a bill that would ban gender changes on birth certificates. The Kentucky medical detransition and ban bill has two sponsors: Representative Savannah Maddox and Representative Felicia Rabourn.

Kansas’ bill goes a step further and sets the cutoff date at 21 years old. The Kansas bill specifies that gender affirming care would be a level 4 felony crime against persons:

This particular bill is extremely damaging to transgender people in the state because not only does it force them off their medication, but it criminalizes their doctors. Kansas’ bill currently has two sponsors: Senator Mark Steffen and Senator Mike Thompson. Typically in the past, most of these bills have a harder time being passed in state senates than in state houses. Significant pressure will be needed in order to prevent them

Both of these bills would force transgender people to medically detransition as well as ban newly out transgender people from transitioning who are under their age cutoffs. Medical detransition occurs whenever gender affirming care is ceased for somebody that is currently prescribed gender affirming care. For transgender women, a cessation of gender affirming care (typically estrogen and a testosterone blocker) will cause their bodies to become testosterone dominant again, forcing facial hair to regrow and male pattern baldness to set in. Among trans men, they will likely see a loss of masculine features, genital and breast changes, a change in the quality of the skin, a loss of muscle growth, and the redevelopment of feminine body fat distribution. For transgender youth who have been on puberty blockers, they will see the puberty associated with their biological sex commence.

These changes would be terrifying to transgender people in Oklahoma, many of whom are forced to live stealth because of a relatively unaccepting cultural environment. For those unaware, “stealth” refers to a state of being where a transgender person hides that they are transgender. This is typically only an option for transgender people who “pass” as their gender, which is made easier by hormone therapy and puberty blockers. Withdrawing that care could very easily force these people into the public eye as some are forced to regrow facial hair, for example.

These bills also contain carveouts for intersex individuals. In both bills, they state that people with “disorders of sexual development” can be given surgery as early as infancy. This surgery is nonconsensual and decried by intersex advocates and medical organizations. These surgeries are, ironically, intended to confirm not the patient’s gender identity but the gender identity that the parents want the patient to have. The existence of intersex people challenges the idea that sex is binary. These bills seek to therefore not just ban transgender people from gender affirming care, but to also force intersex people into fitting that binary.

Many other states are proposing transgender ban and detransition bills. Texas has published a non-binding resolution to declare the legislature’s support for “ending gender affirming care” entirely. South Carolina has presented a bill to ban and force medical detransition on those under 21 years old. Missouri proposed a ban that would not only do this but also consider gender affirmation therapy child abuse - Texas has proposed similar legislation. Other states that have gender affirming care ban and detransition bills include Virginia, Tennessee, and Montana with several other states coming down the pipeline. Alabama and Florida have both already enacted ban and detransition laws or policies.

The growth of anti-trans bills and the shifting of age ranges is reminiscent of the attempts to ban abortion care entirely by lowering the “gestational age” limit where you are allowed to perform an abortion. This tactic ultimately worked for the right and led to an overturning of Roe v. Wade as well as a shifting of the Overton window around abortion. Gillian Branstetter from the ACLU notes that these bills are designed to “make 18 seem like a compromise.” Banning gender affirming care and forcing detransition is never acceptable, no matter the age.