Kansas Measure Could Criminalize Medical Treatment For Transgender Youth

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas legislation that would make it a felony for medical practitioners to offer medical solutions that aid transgender youth changeover is not likely to get a listening to, the head of the committee to which it has been assigned said Thursday.

4 conservative GOP users of the Kansas Household introduced the evaluate Wednesday, drawing fast and solid condemnation from the Legislature’s initial transgender member, its two other openly LGBTQ lawmakers and the executive director of the state’s main LGBTQ-legal rights corporation.

It is among the steps in more than a dozen point out legislatures targeting transgender youth in sports activities or medical remedies for them. States are looking at them soon after an executive get from Democratic President Joe Biden prohibiting discrimination dependent on gender identification in university sporting activities and somewhere else sparked a backlash from conservative groups.

“It turns off the medical interventions that a dad or mum can look for for their kid,” mentioned Democratic Rep. Stephanie Byers, of Wichita, a transgender woman who was elected previous year.

Byers additional: “I’ve known who I am considering that I was — in advance of kindergarten.”

The Household health committee probably will not have a listening to for the measure due to the fact it has as well substantially other work, these types of as proposals for modernizing the state’s mental health method, mentioned Chair Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican.

The invoice would use not only to undertaking surgery on transgender minors but also to other treatment plans, this kind of as prescribing drugs to block the onset of puberty to prepare a boy or girl for transitioning. Less than the measure, doctors could be sentenced to up to eight months in jail for “unlawful gender reassignment service” and eliminate their medical licenses for unprofessional conduct.

One of the Kansas measure’s sponsors, rural northeast Kansas Republican Rep. Randy Garber, mentioned it is designed to defend minors when they are “too younger to be making those people selections.”

Asked about LGBTQ advocates’ statements that transgender people today often know from a younger age that their identities do not match the gender assigned to them at birth, Garber said: “They in all probability know they want to get drunk, far too, but we don’t allow them consume alcohol, do we? Or smoke, or no matter what.”

Kansas is among the at the very least 8 states in which lawmakers are looking at such a evaluate. At the very least 7 states are considering proposals to restrict transgender students’ participation in sports activities, a measure that was released in the Kansas Household last yr but died without obtaining a hearing. Lawmakers in Montana and South Carolina are looking at both equally strategies.

“Ever because (exact-intercourse) relationship was declared constitutional, they’ve changed their targets,” reported Tom Witt, government director of Equality Kansas. “Instead of likely right after grownups, virtually just about every one one particular of these expenditures across the country has been targeted at minor young ones.”

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