A proposed restriction on gender-affirming care for trans youngsters was opposed by hundreds of trans advocates and health professionals who gathered on Wednesday at the Ohio statehouse.
Democratic state Rep. Gary Click, who supported legislation that would forbid doctors from providing gender-affirming treatment to transgender patients under the age of 18, presented a bill to the Ohio Republican government oversight committee this week. Transgender girl student athletes would also be prohibited from taking part in women’s sports by the bill.
Transgender rights campaigner and Ohio school student Cam Ogden spent 17 days in the legislature on Wednesday. In the courtyard of the building, she and different demonstrators gathered around a television.
Ogden remarked that “so many people showed up to speak out that even the overflowing apartments were packed full.” “With so many persons showing up to speak on a bill,” I’ve been visiting the legislature for the past two years.
Ogden observed families, physicians, high school students, and adolescent sports testify against the bill’s passage one by one. Individuals who oppose the restrictions on gender-affirming care gave the Ohio House more than 600 written testimonies earlier this year, compared to only 56 in favor of the policy.
The Ohio House passed the bill in June despite fierce and persistent criticism, opening the door for the Republican supermajority in the Senate to give it to Governor Mike DeWine, another Republican.
A ban on gender-affirming care for transgender children would “ensure that children and adolescents receive only the best and safest care,” according to Click, the bill’s lead sponsor, in a speech earlier this year.
The Ohio legislator argued that “Save the adulting for parents and let kids be kids.”
A 2018 speech delivered by Click, a reverend at the Fremont Baptist Church, was republished in the Ohio Capitol Journal in May. A California law prohibiting conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ folks was criticized by Click in the film, The Value of Family.
In the speech, Click said of LGBTQ+ people, “God does not approve of that lifestyle.”
The best doctors and medical professionals in Ohio are among the most vocal opponents of Click’s policy.
The Ohio Children’s Hospital Association president, Nick Lashutka, testified on Wednesday that the act “strips away” the right of parents with transgender children. Importantly, Ohio hospitals do not provide new patients with gender-affirming treatment without a parent or guardian’s permission.
The state has a “standard of care,” according to Lashutka, “in which an intensive, multidisciplinary team assesses each patient.” The trans child must exhibit “persistent, insistent, and consistent” symptoms of gender dysphoria before medical intervention begins, according to Lashutka in testimony.
He claimed that if our gender clinics are forced to close, these children may still exist because they existed before we built them.
The bill’s detractors claim that it is a more severe incarnation of the Missouri laws passed in August, which forbids public health care providers from giving kids gender-affirming treatments. Minors in Missouri who started taking hormones or puberty blockers before the law was passed are permitted to keep taking them, but other juveniles are not.
According to Mallory Golski, political engagement and campaigning director at Kaleidoscope Youth Center, a Columbus-based non-profit that supports LGBTQ+ youth in Ohio, the Ohio bill “does not include the grandfather clause that would allow minors now on hormone replacement therapy to maintain that care.”
Until the age of 18, trans children who had already begun estrogen therapy may be compelled to undergo medical detransition. Parents and doctors are concerned that the change will severely harm the emotional wellbeing of transgender kids in the state.
According to a Trevor Project report from last year, alarmingly high rates of suicide attempts, depression, and anxiety affected almost 34,000 gay and trans youth between the ages of 13 and 24. In 2022, more than 50% of transgender and non-binary children in US states had serious suicidal thoughts.
According to Dr. Kate Krueck, an Ohio physician, in her testimony on Wednesday, “Puberty blockers buy time for an individual to explore their core identity.”
Hundreds of trans parents spoke before the senatorial committee this week, including Krueck.
“Gender-affirming care saves lives,” she continued.
