Oklahoma Could Force Trans People Under 26 Years Old To Detransition Medically

A new bill has been filed in Oklahoma that would ban gender affirming care under age 26. Republican states are moving towards banning transition entirely.

Photo by Gerson Repreza on Unsplash

A terrifying new bill was released late Wednesday night in Oklahoma that would ban gender affirming care for a huge number of people. Oklahoma SB129 would ban gender affirming care under the age of 26 years old. Gen Z would be entirely banned from gender affirming care under this bill. This prospect is terrifying because Gen Z has been the most open about transitioning and a bill like this would medically detransition a huge portion of Oklahoma’s transgender population. This comes after other states like New Hampshire and South Carolina saw bills filed to raise the age of transition to 21, and places like Florida utilized a sham medical board to ban gender affirming care under 18. Slowly, states are moving towards an outright ban on being transgender - it is for these reasons that people have begun calling the attacks on gender affirming care an attempt at genocide.

Here is the relevant section of the bill (note earlier in the bill it defines “gender transition procedures” as everything from hormone therapy to surgery):

Adult medical detransition bills have been a hypothetical escalation until recent weeks. Anti-trans organizations such as Genspect and Transgender Trend started pushing for 18-25 year old bans this year. Up until recently, the closest we have come was a representative in Missouri musing over increasing the age of the bill to 25 years old - a decision they declined to make. These earlier discussions of 25-and-under bans and indications in committee hearings in states across the United States lead me to make a call several months ago that at least one state would attempt to ban gender affirming care for this age group. If this bill passes, it would be the harshest anti-trans bill ever passed.

Oklahoma has already been on a downward trajectory for transgender rights. Anti-trans bills have been filed and passed in the state multiple times this year. One bill threatened to defund hospitals if they provided gender affirming care for trans youth. The hospital relented and stopped offering gender affirming care for this population. Other Oklahoma bills that have passed include banning all trans youth from bathrooms that match their gender identity as well as a sports ban.

Gender affirming care saves lives. One study in JAMA showed that gender affirming care reduced the risk of suicide by up to 73%. The consequences of banning this care, especially for such a large population, are horrifying. It would outright cause an increase in the death rate in the trans community via suicide. Mental anguish from withdrawal of gender affirming care and re-feminization or re-masculinization would be too much for many transgender people to take and the community would face one of its worst mental health crises leading to real physical harm.

Bills like this are designed to do two things - stoke fear in the trans community, and turn up the temperature to banning gender affirming care entirely by shifting the Overton window. Even if these bills don’t pass, they help drive trans people out of the state or back into hiding. Likewise, they make it easier for “moderates” to then react with banning the care for “only those under 21” or “only those under 18.” It is easy to see this effect when just 3 years ago, the main debate was over transgender people playing sports - now we are looking at states attempting to eliminate their transgender populations entirely.

The movement of the Overton window continues to threaten all transgender people in the United States. Texas recently released a resolution calling for an end to gender affirming care entirely. These bills are designed to be passed as anti-trans voices take over the Republican party - people like Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok, Tucker Carlson, and Matt Walsh have turned their huge audiences on the trans community in a moral panic unlike anything we have ever seen. It is imperative that we show up and stop these bills, both in Oklahoma and around the United States.