The law threatens any healthcare professional who provides puberty
blockers, cross-sex hormones or gender-affirming surgery to minors
with losing their medical license and opens them up to lawsuits from
patients who later regret their procedures.
At least 16 other states are considering similar legislation, which
transgender advocates have attacked, saying that cutting off badly
needed care to adolescents would inevitably lead to more suicides.
The healthcare bills are among dozens of others introduced across
the country that would limit transgender rights in what critics have
called unconstitutional attempts to animate the right wing in the
U.S. culture war.
But proponents of the bills, nearly all Republican, say they want to
protect kids from medical procedures they will later regret.
They also accuse transgender advocates of minimizing the side
effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and point to the
small number of cases where transgender people reverse their
decision to transition.
Hutchinson, a Republican in his second and final term, had vetoed
the legislation on Monday, calling it "a vast government overreach."
But the Arkansas House voted 71 to 24 on Tuesday to override the
veto, followed shortly thereafter by the Senate, 25 to eight. The
bill will become law 90 days after the end of the legislative
session, which is currently scheduled to end on April 30.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents 67,000
pediatricians, was among the medical organizations to oppose the
bill, saying it would cut off trans kids from needed medical care
and needlessly increase their already high risk of suicide.
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"Today Arkansas legislators
disregarded widespread, overwhelming, and
bipartisan opposition to this bill and continued
their discriminatory crusade against trans
youth," said Holly Dickson, director of the
Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties
Union, which has vowed to challenge the law in
court.
Experts say each step in a transgender child or
adolescent's treatment is undertaken with the
consultation of doctors, therapists and social
workers, often over months if not years.
Those who consistently identify as transgender can be prescribed
puberty blockers. Others graduate to cross-sex hormone therapy, a
more serious commitment to transitioning. A small number opt for
some type of surgery with parental consent, but experts say those
cases for minors are extremely rare.
"There's tons of solid science supporting this approach. There's a
general consensus among professionals in this field and in
professionals in health and mental health fields in general," said
Madeline Deutsch, medical director for transgender care at
University of California, San Francisco.
But a minority of dissenters such as the American College of
Pediatricians, representing 600 healthcare professionals, contend
that with time and counseling transgender people will revert to
their sex assigned at birth.
"We are basically being blackmailed (into providing hormone
treatments) by that adolescent who's emotionally troubled into doing
something that they don't understand," said Quentin Van Meter,
president of the group. "A 13-year-old cannot wrap their head around
the concept of building a biological family in their later years."
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