STAT+: House set to vote on bills to ban gender-affirming care for young people

Republicans in Congress are making a renewed push before the end of the year to pass major federal restrictions to gender-affirming care for trans minors. 

The House is set to consider two bills this week, before lawmakers depart for their holiday break. One, introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), aims to prohibit doctors from providing any gender-affirming care to minors by amending an existing statute on female genital mutilation. It refers to treatments like surgery and hormone therapy as “genital or bodily mutilation” and “chemical castration.” The other, from Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), would ban Medicaid from funding that care for minors. 

“It’s been an all-hands-on-deck effort to restrict this access,” said Lindsey Dawson, director of LGBTQ health policy at KFF. The bills would create “a sweeping ban” of gender-affirming care for young people, and constitute another “layer of effort” by the administration in pursuit of that outcome, she said.

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