The Kansas Senate introduced a bill in February 2023 that aimed to ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors by taking civil legal action against physicians and nurses who provide gender-affirming care and revoking their licenses. Last week, the Kansas House passed a substitute version of the bill.
SB233, otherwise called the “Forbidding Abuse Child Transitions Act,” would effectively ban trans kids from obtaining gender-affirming care by banning physicians from providing transgender minors with puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery. If physicians provide such care, they could have their licenses revoked and can be sued by the parents of the patient or the patient themselves for up to 10 years after the patient turns 18.
Additionally, SB233 prohibits state employees whose official duties include working with children from promoting or advocating social transitioning, medication or surgery while “engaged in those official duties.” It also prohibits state property from being used to “promote or advocate social transitioning, medication or surgery as a treatment for a child whose perceived gender or perceived sex is inconsistent with such child’s sex” except to the extent that the first amendment requires. The bill defines “social transitioning” as “acts other than medical or surgical interventions that are undertaken for the purpose of presenting as a member of the opposite sex, including the changing of an individual’s preferred pronouns or manner of dress.”
I cannot stress enough that this bill is NOT about protecting children. If it was, lawmakers would be more concerned about combating issues that actually harm children and push for increased access to suicide prevention and mental health resources for Kansas youth. They would also expand access to gender-affirming care as a plethora of research associates it with improved mental health outcomes and a reduction of suicidality in trans youth. Instead, this bill is a blatant political stunt to follow the lead of other red states who have proposed and passed similar bills. It is purely born out of mass hysteria, transphobia and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.
Surgery as a form of gender-affirming care for minors ages 13-17 is virtually uncommon. The vast majority of gender-affirming surgeries happen after an individual turns 18. It is far more common for minors to receive puberty blockers and/or hormone therapy during their journey to ease gender dysphoria, which is the distress one experiences from the disconnect between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth or sex characteristics.
Puberty blockers simply pause puberty by halting the production of sex hormones; puberty resumes when treatment stops. Hormone therapy initiates puberty aligned with one’s gender identity and is often used after puberty blockers or when the opportunity to use blockers has passed; while some of the effects of hormone therapy are permanent, others may be reversible after stopping hormone therapy. Reversibility largely depends on how long one has been taking testosterone or estrogen. Medical professionals have indicated that these practices are generally safe.
Studies have shown the vast majority of individuals who pursue gender-affirming care as minors continue to pursue it as adults. A 2022 cohort study of transgender adolescents who visited Amsterdam UMC’s gender identity clinic for gender dysphoria found that 98 percent of adolescents who utilized puberty blockers went on to continue gender-affirming care as adults. Moreover, major medical organizations have published guidelines for age-appropriate gender-affirming care, such as the Endocrine Society, or have published policy statements in support of gender-affirming care.
When it comes to social transitioning, the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that “retransitions are infrequent” and trans youth who socially transition at a young age often continue to identify as trans; their findings showed that 94 percent of transgender youth in their sample continued to identify as transgender five years after socially transitioning.
SB233 is not an evidence-based, child protection bill like many proponents of the bill would like you to believe. Instead, it is a bill formulated out of hate, transphobia and the need to police identities. I am by no means an expert, but this bill will only harm trans Kansas youth and spark a witch hunt amid an already dire need for physicians.
SB233 does nothing to protect children and it surely has no place in Kansas.