Texas Resolution Seeks To "End Gender Affirming Care" Entirely

Though the resolution is filled with talking points against trans kids, it calls ALL gender affirming care "dangerous" and says it "ruins lives."

Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash

Transgender people have been warning this would happen for the last three years. The state of Texas has released a bill which is the first of my knowledge to openly call for the end of gender affirming care in its entirety. SCR #3 is a bill filled with falsehoods and designed to provide justification for Texas’s extreme action against transgender people. Just last week, Texas released 10 bills targeting the transgender community, defining trans people as doing drag and curtailing their medical treatments and ability to exist in public. Now, this bill specifically calls for an “end to gender affirming care.” Let’s look through it:

The document lists a set of “resolutions” that have no actual enforcement power, but that collectively spell out the State of Texas’ views and interpretations on the validity of gender affirming care. These resolutions are dangerous because they provide philosophical justification for the curtailing of transgender rights. They can be used as guidance by the executive branch of Texas or by individual schools and agents of the state in their own decision-making. They also exist as a way of codifying the legislature’s opinion into law for future reference.

The first paragraph notes that all major medical organizations support gender affirming care. One would think that this would be enough to block any attempts to ban gender affirming care, but we are only getting started. The second paragraph completely ignores the medical judgement of the first paragraph and claims that gender affirming care is an “abhorrent practice of genital mutilation” and compares trans youth on gender affirming care to allowing them to smoke cigarettes - a ridiculous comparison given the first paragraph’s noting that gender affirming care has been supported as safe and effective by all major medical organizations. I will note that while the entire document focuses on trans youth, there are many statements that are made at the entirety of gender affirming care such as the claim that GAC is “abhorrent” and “genital mutilation.”

The third paragraph focuses on political detransitioners, which we have seen paraded out by the right wing similar to the ex-gay movement of the early 1990s. It points out the Tavistock vs. Bell decision and claims that in the United Kingdom, trans youth cannot transition. This is absolutely false - Tavistock vs. Bell was overturned by the UK Supreme court, and trans youth are allowed to transition in the United Kingdom - this has not changed at all.

The fourth paragraph refers to rare complications from puberty blockers and these rare complications are found to be far less clinically significant than the benefits of these medications. We do not ban Tylenol in teens because of the extremely rare chance of acute liver failure, nor do we ban any number of other much stronger medications when provided under medical consultation with doctors.

The fifth and sixth paragraphs are the most alarming, however. These paragraphs focus on the entirety of gender affirming care, not carving out trans youth, and represent a significant escalation in the attacks on transgender rights in Texas and in America as a whole. The fifth paragraph declares that gender affirming care is a “dangerous practice that destroys lives” and that those who advocate against it (“suppress its opposition”) deserve censure. The sixth paragraph resolves that gender affirming care as a whole should be entirely ended and expresses support for ending it by the 88th legislature of Texas.

We must stand in opposition to these kinds of genocidal bills in the strongest of ways. If Texas is allowed to pass this, they will create a vanguard of anti-trans sentiment that will be used as philosophical justification to target trans adults next. Already we have seen some organizations and states proposing bans of hormone therapy for transgender adults up to the age of 25. Just like they were never going to stop at sports or bathrooms, they’ll never stop at trans youth. ALL transgender people deserve rights, respect, and dignity. Stop this resolution.