Marjorie Taylor Greene takes aim at gender-affirming care for trans youth

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Friday said she will reintroduce legislation she sponsored during the last Congress to criminalize the provision of gender-affirming health care to minors, accusing Democrats who support such care of “coming for our children.”

“It couldn’t pass last Congress because, like I said, Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House, and she doesn’t believe in gender at all. But we have a new Speaker in our Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and I’m going to be introducing my bill … that will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender-affirming care,” Greene said Friday at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland, eliciting cheers and applause from conference attendees.

Greene’s bill, the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” outlaws more than a dozen medical interventions and procedures that are used to treat gender dysphoria in transgender youths, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and certain surgeries done “for the purpose of changing the body of such individual to correspond to a sex that differs from their biological sex.”

Gender-affirming health care — for both transgender youths and adults — is considered safe, effective and medically necessary by most major medical associations. The only acceptable form of gender-affirming care for transgender minors who have not yet started puberty is social transition, which can include using a different name or pronouns or wearing gender-affirming clothing, according to guidelines set by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society.

Greene’s bill, first introduced in August, would also prohibit the use of federal funds for gender-affirming health care, including in Affordable Care Act plans. The proposed legislation would also hand down harsh penalties to health care providers who continue to treat transgender minors, including 10 to 25 years in prison and fines totaling up to $250,000.

“I don’t know about you,” Greene said Friday, “but when it comes to kids, I think the Republican Party has a duty. We have a responsibility, and that is to be the party that protects children.”

Greene said CPAC and its embattled chairman, Matt Schlapp, have endorsed the bill in the current Congress. It will be introduced next week, she said.

While Greene’s legislation is the first of its kind at the federal level, at least two dozen states are pursuing similar measures with more than 100 state bills introduced this year targeting transgender health care, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

On Thursday, Tennessee became the eighth state in the nation to ban gender-affirming care for youth and the fourth to do so this year. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) signed a similar ban into law on Wednesday.

LGBTQ advocacy and civil rights groups, including the ACLU, have filed federal lawsuits against gender-affirming health care bans in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida and elsewhere.