House Passes Bill Criminalizing Gender-Affirming Care For Trans Youth
The House passed Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” that could imprison health care providers for providing gender-affirming care to minors.
Featured Image – Rep. Greene proposing the bill in 2022: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
On Wednesday, the House voted to pass a bill that would criminalize gender affirming care for minors, including surgery, hormones and puberty blockers and could imprison health care providers who provide such care for up to 10 years.
The “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” was sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and was passed almost along party lines at 216-211 with four Republicans opposing and three Democrats supporting. Greene said she was promised a vote on her bill in exchange for her support on the defense policy measure she was threatening to sink.
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In the Senate, the bill has little chance of passing due to it needing bipartisan support. “Most Americans agree that kids just need to grow up before they do anything radical, like a mastectomy on a 15-year-old girl,” Greene said on the House floor. Greene said that the bill was fulfilling what the American people voted for: “the opportunity to vote to end the genital mutilation of children via transgender treatments.”
Ahead of the vote, Rep. Sarah McBride criticized Republicans as being “obsessed with trans people” saying, “I actually think they think more about trans people than trans people think about trans people.”
The House is expected to vote on a second bill, sponsored by GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, that would prohibit federal Medicaid funding for “gender transition procedures for minors.”
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“They would rather have us focused on in and debate a misunderstood and vulnerable one percent of the population instead of focusing in on the fact that they’re raiding everyone’s healthcare in order to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent,” McBride said. “…Government should never insert itself into the personal healthcare decisions of patients, parents, and providers.”
