On Apr. 4, the Texas Senate passed a bill that would prohibit the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and sex-change surgery for minors, reported the Dallas Morning News. The bill now goes to the Texas House, where it is expected to pass.
The legislation would also revoke the medical licenses of persons who try to offer such trasngender therapies to minors.
State Sen. Donna Campbell (R), who drafted the bill and is a medical doctor, said on Twitter, "I am very pleased SB 14 has been finally passed by the Texas Senate. This priority legislation will protect Texas children from harmful, medically unecesary gender modification treatments and I am grateful to my Senate colleagues for their support."
The legislation prohibits the following procedures for people under the age of 18: castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty, mastectomy, as well as "provide, prescribe, administer, or dispense" any prescription drugs that induce transient or permanent infertility.
This includes "puberty suppression or blocking prescription drugs to stop or delay normal puberty."
Also, "no public money" (Medicaid) may be used to perform any of the above-described procedures on minors.
The LGBTQ activist group, the Human Rights Campaign, said the bill is "part of an aggressive ongoing effort in the Texas legislature to target LGTBQ+ equality, and especially the rights of transgender children and the people who love them."
"Ill-informed politicians in Austin are interfering with the rights of Texas parents to access best practice medical care for their children and trying to tell them how to create safe and stable homes for their kids," said the HRC. "Enough is enough."
Commenting on the transgender issue in general, Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote, "Indeed, modern science shows that our sex manifests itself in every level of our being, from the obvious physical differences between men and women, to our internal organs and the way our bodies are structured, continuing all the way down to our DNA."
"While cosmetic surgery and cross-sex hormones can affect appearances, they cannot change the underlying biological reality that men and women are different from the moment of conception," he added.
If SB14 passes in the Texas House and is signed by the governor, it would go into effect on Sept. 1, 2023.