Sen. JD Vance & Marjorie Taylor Greene are trying to ban gender-affirming care at federal level

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) has filed a bill in the Senate that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors at the federal level, making following the standard of care supported by major medical organizations a Class C felony.

In a press release supporting his bill – which is a companion bill to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) Protect Children’s Innocence Act that she filed in the House – Vance spread misinformation about gender-affirming care, calling such care “these gruesome, irreversible operations on underage children.”

Related:

Marjorie Taylor Greene attacks Georgia’s trans medical ban for not being transphobic enough

She doesn’t want doctors to decide what is or isn’t “medically necessary.” She wants politicians to decide that.

Gender-affirming care for trans minors almost never includes surgery and for younger children it’s mostly just letting them dress how they want and play with the toys they want to play with and referring to them with the right pronouns. For teens it can include puberty blockers – which have been shown to reduce lifelong suicide risk among trans people – and hormone therapy. Some older teens can access some forms of non-genital surgery if they meet the stringent requirements, which is rare.

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“With this legislation, we have an opportunity to save countless young Americans from a lifetime of suffering and regret,” Vance said in the statement. “I want to thank Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for leading on this issue, and I look forward to working with my Senate colleagues to protect children from these life-altering procedures.”

A 2021 review of 27 studies involving 8000 trans people who underwent gender-affirming surgery found that only 1% expressed regret. A 2017 study found that patient regret is, on average, 14.4% for surgery in general.

Gender-affirming care for trans minors is supported by the American Medical Association (AMA), the Endocrine Society, and other leading medical organizations. The AMA issued a resolution just last month reaffirming their support for gender-affirming care based on scientific evidence.

“Due to widespread misinformation about medical care for transgender and gender-diverse teens, 18 states have passed laws or instituted policies banning gender-affirming care,” the AMA said in a statement released to the media. “These policies do not reflect the research landscape. More than 2,000 scientific studies have examined aspects of gender-affirming care since 1975.”

They note that while politicians have painted gender-affirming care for youth as radical, proper care procedures are conservative and measured. Despite widespread claims by the right, they note that genital surgery is only done after the age of 18. Instead, the standard of care involves using hormone treatment to delay puberty to maximize the time teenagers and their families have to explore their gender identity and make decisions about future care.

Greene and Vance’s Protect Children’s Innocence Act doesn’t just ban transgender minors from accessing gender-affirming care, it also makes it more difficult for transgender adults to access such care by blocking Medicaid funds from being used to reimburse patients for gender-affirming care. The bill would also ban medical schools from teaching about gender-affirming care, stop health care plans under the Affordable Care Act from funding gender-affirming care, and ban anyone found to have performed gender-affirming care from immigrating to the U.S.

The bill is unlikely to pass the Democratic Senate and, if it ever did, would likely not be signed by President Joe Biden, who has said that he believes that medical decisions should be left to families and their doctors. The bill is more of an indication of what Republicans may try to do if they get control of the Senate and the White House in a coming election.

Last week, the Republican Study Committee endorsed Greene’s bill.