Staff Reports
By making SB 14 a law, conservative Republican Governor Greg Abbott has done a huge thing to protect the children of the state. Transgender treatments that can't be undone will be illegal for children in Texas. This includes puberty blockers, sex hormones, and surgeries like a double mastectomy for girls who want to be boys. The bill also makes sure that state money won't be used to pay for these kinds of treatments on children.
VICTORY! Texas Becomes Largest State to Ban Transgender Procedures on Childrenhttps://t.co/RDbRpSKhko
— The Daily Fetched (@DailyFetched) June 3, 2023
The bill's author, Sen. Donna Campbell, said that if doctors can't police themselves to protect children, then the government needs to step in. She also said that kids don't need knives and drugs, but therapy and love. At least 18 other states have made it illegal for teenagers to get transgender surgery, but Texas is now the biggest state to protect kids from these kinds of procedures.
Texas becomes largest state to ban transgender care for minors https://t.co/AnqhZqKIU1 pic.twitter.com/c6bpXmKrle
— Reuters World (@ReutersWorld) June 3, 2023
The Texas law says that procedures can't be done "to change a child's biological sex as shown by the child's sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous profiles or to confirm the child's perception of his or her sex if that perception is different from the child's biological sex." But Democrats put up roadblocks to the bill by using political tricks to slow it down.
Rep. Shawn Thierry, a Republican, voted for the bill even though Democrats were dragging their feet. He did this by pointing to scientific data that showed the long-term effects of transgender procedures on children. Thierry said that they decided against letting children get "GnRH-analogs" (also called "puberty blockers"), "cross-sex hormones," or have irreversible surgeries to change their gender identity.
Legal groups on the left, like the ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal, have said they will fight the Texas law in court. But Governor Abbott is worried about the children of Texas and wants to protect them from transgender treatments that can't be changed back. Reports that a children's hospital in Houston did transgender procedures on children as young as 11 and that several of them got implanted puberty blockers show how important this law is. The children of Texas need love, care, and security, not procedures that hurt them and can't be changed.
