Marjorie Taylor Greene has reintroduced a bill that could result in doctors who offer gender-affirming care being sent to jail.
The US representative, a staunch ally of president Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and a conspiracy theorist, resurrected a bill that would make it a federal felony for doctors to provide forms of gender-affirming medical care to transgender youngsters under the age of 18.
Dubbed the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, the proposed legislation would prevent federal money being used to fund gender-affirming care for all transgender people, including through Medicaid, and prohibit medical schools teaching practices on trans healthcare.
Greene first tried to pass the bill in 2022, as part of a campaign to prevent what she described as “child abuse.” It failed to reach the house floor and met the same fate in 2023 after Georgia representative Greene had another go at introducing it.
Gearing up for her third attempt, Greene claimed the bill would stop “the mutilation of kids and hold those responsible for performing or facilitating these barbaric procedures accountable”.
The assertion that gender-affirming care is “mutilation” is a dog-whistle argument which portrays trans healthcare as non-consensual and falsely claims it only refers to surgical interventions such as sexual reassignment.
Trans under-18s are rarely permitted to undergo surgery anywhere in the world. Those who do are typically teenagers and it involves less-risky procedures such as facial feminisation or chest masculinisation, often known as top surgery. For anyone under the age of 18, gender-affirming care typically refers either to psychological support or physically reversible medical interventions such as puberty blockers.
Nevertheless, Greene argued in a post on X/Twitter that there was “nothing affirming” about trans healthcare, despite it being described as such by major medical organisations around the world.
The American Medical Association (AMA) has condemned similar bills which have been passed in at least 18 states across the US, saying they had been enacted because of “widespread misinformation,” according to LGBTQ+ Nation.
“These policies do not reflect the research landscape. More than 2,000 scientific studies have examined the aspects of gender-affirming care since 1975,” an AMA spokesperson wrote on the Endocrine Society website.
“Paediatric gender-affirming care is designed to take a conservative approach. When young children experience feelings that their gender identity does not match the sex recorded at birth, the first course of action is to support the child in exploring their gender identity and to provide mental-health support, as needed… medical intervention is reserved for older adolescents and adults.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene claims trans community is ‘brainwashing’ children
The bill, which has 38 Republican co-sponsors, is unlikely to pass, although whether it will reach the house floor this time remains to be seen.
Greene has often promoted anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theories since being elected in 2021, including a bizarre claim that last year’s Hurricane Helene, which ravaged areas across Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and North and South Carolina – leaving 251 dead and causing billions of dollars of damage – only hit Republican-controlled states, possibly hinting that it was somehow being controlled.
In December, her speech outside the US Supreme Court, ahead of oral arguments in the case of US vs Skrmetti, which could dictate the future of gender-affirming care bans in the US, was drowned out by protestors’ boos.
She responded by claiming: “What you’re hearing is the outcry from the demons and those that worship evil [who] are abusing our children, brainwashing our children to believe the lies that come directly from Satan.”
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