(Daily Mail) The intensifying debate over the rights of America’s transgender people is coming to a head this year, with scores of Republican-led bills aimed at banning puberty blockers in front of state legislatures.
Some 100 bills have been proposed across 27 states aimed at stopping children from accessing hormone blocking drugs and other types of ‘gender-affirming care’, according to several groups and politicians who monitor the issue.
Other draft laws being debated in state legislatures cover everything from which pronouns can be used in classrooms, whether trans girls can play in trans sports teams and if trans people must use bathrooms that correspond to their birth sex.
They are being debated as trans people complain about battling prejudice in a fight for their survival, while parents of trans-identifying teens bemoan their kids being indoctrinated by online ideologues, some even encouraged by their teachers.
For trans activists and their opponents alike, America is at a turning point on whether to wholesale adopt the beliefs of a vocal trans minority, or put the brakes on the movement by restricting access to trans procedures for kids.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said there were some 450 anti-LGBTQ bills being debated across the US this year. Other groups put the number at closer to 350
A recent YouGov survey of 1,000 adults across red and blue states found that Americans were largely against so-called ‘gender-affirming’ procedures for children
LGBTQ+ activists and supporters sing Dolly Parton’s song ‘9 to 5’ at a Tennessee House Criminal Justice full committee hearing on banning drag acts on any public property in the state
Jay Richards, an analytic philosopher at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said: ‘2023 is the decisive year on the legal front on … gender-affirming care for minors.’
‘This is the manifestation of the wider spread of gender ideology and culture that I think is most upsetting to people, and it’s the most visceral,’ he added.
Gender-affirming care covers everything from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones and, in rare cases for trans children under 18, surgery. Medical associations, which call the bills transphobic, say such healthcare saves lives among a suicide-prone group.
But opponents of trans ideology say sex is determined at birth and cannot be changed, that medical groups have been hijacked by activists and that politicians must intervene to stop parents, doctors or therapists from permanently harming children.
According to the White House, the Human Rights Campaign, and a legislation tracker maintained by Erin Reed and other trans campaigners, there’s an aggressive push of some 100 bills aimed at gender-affirming care for children this year.
The Governors of South Dakota and Utah have already signed into law bans on trans procedures for kids that lawmakers approved earlier this year. Bills in Idaho, Missouri, Wyoming, Tennessee, and Texas seek to do the same.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, a Republican who is running for reelection, said he will sign such a bill that was approved by the state’s Republican-controlled senate this week.
‘Sterilizing and castrating children in the name of new gender ideology is wrong,’ Reeves wrote on Twitter.
‘That plain truth is somehow controversial in today’s world.’
The harsher proposals involve seeking criminal liability for doctors and parents. Others would have the effect of making it impossible for doctors who offer trans procedures to minors to get malpractice insurance.
Jay Richards (right), an analytic philosopher at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and others protest against radical ‘gender ideology’ in Washington DC
Protestors stand outside the Senate chamber of the Statehouse in Indianapolis after politicians passed a bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for minors
Some even seek to ban drag queen shows.
The bills are often opposed by Democrats. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre this week slammed the ‘450 and counting anti-LGBTQI+ bills’ as ‘cheap shots’ that would hurt a vulnerable group.
Trans and other Americans living alternative lifestyles endured ‘alarming levels of depression and suicide, as well as being victims of hate crimes,’ she told reporters.
Even once they’re adopted, civil liberties groups often mount legal challenges to the laws that can drag out for years.
Reed, a male-to-female transitioner, researcher and activist, said the ‘legislative assault on transgender people is a genocide against us.’
‘It seeks to remove us from public life, remove all legal protections, remove our trans children from parents, remove their medically necessary care. It will kill people,’ she added.
Despite such invective, the Republican bill-drafters appear to have the public on side. A recent YouGov survey of 1,000 adults across red and blue states found that Americans were largely against gender-affirming procedures for children.
Some 61 percent said rejected giving puberty blockers to 12-year-olds, while 21 percent said it was acceptable. They also deemed cross sex hormones and breast surgeries not acceptable by similar margins.
Among them is Yaacov Sheinfeld, 64, a restoration architect from New Jersey, who shares the experience of many American parents — he did not affirm his daughter Sophia’s decision to undergo breast removal surgery aged 17 as part of her female-to-male transition.
Male-to-female trans rights activist Erin Reed (left) on the White House lawn for the signing of a gay-friendly marriage law in December. She called the rash of anti-trans bills in 2023 a ‘genocide against us’
Tom Rawlings, front seated left, a former official on families, and Republican Georgia Sen. Carden Summers, seated right, testifying at the state Capitol in Atlanta this month. They favor a bill that would stop teachers from talking to students about gender
‘The world lost a great and wonderful soul.’ Yaacov Sheinfeld, now 64, pictured with his daughter, Sophia, who went on to suffer from depression and gender dysphoria, eventually dying from a drug overdose
According to Sheinfeld, Sophia suffered from depression and was swayed into taking testosterone and transitioning by peers, online influencers and a Massachusetts-based social worker, Shannon Sennott.
Sophia underwent the procedure, but suffered from worsening mental health issues and died of a fentanyl overdose in 2021, aged 28. Sennott did not answer DailyMail.com’s requests for comment.
‘The world lost a great and wonderful soul,’ said Sheinfeld.
‘Too many young people and their families are being devastated by this cultlike trans ideology. It’s about time lawmakers restricted access to puberty blockers and surgeries, and in my opinion we need to go a lot further to protect vulnerable young people.’
America has in recent weeks witnessed a series of seminal moments in the trans debate that are seeing a growing number of pediatricians, parents, politicians and even young trans people themselves question whether affirmation-on-demand is always the best answer.
Critics of the trans movement often point to de-transitioners, as they are known, like Chloe Cole, 18, who this week sued the healthcare providers who gave her puberty blockers at age 13 and a double mastectomy at 15 — procedures she now deeply regrets.
