Alabama passes bill to ban sex-change surgeries and hormone blockers for children

It looks like so-called “gender affirmation treatments” will most likely be headed to the Supreme Court, as state governments are taking matters into their own hands in order to protect children from becoming the guinea pigs in this vast social experiment our society has embarked on. From Alabama News:

The Alabama Senate today passed a bill that would make it a crime for doctors to prescribe opposite sex hormones or drugs that block puberty from people under age 19 who identify as transgender. The bill by Sen. Shay Shelnutt, R-Trussville, was approved by a committee last week after a public hearing that included testimony from doctors and people with first-hand experiences who took positions both for and against the bill.

Shelnutt said today most children with gender dysphoria eventually adjust and that giving them medications that could have permanent effects amounts to child abuse. Shelnutt’s bill is called the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act. The Senate passed the bill today by a vote of 22-3. It moves to the House of Representatives.

“I just don’t think and others don’t think that kids should be given experimental drugs or surgeries that could have irreversible consequences for the rest of their life,” Shelnutt said. “Kids are not fully developed until later in life. I think we can all agree that kids aren’t capable of making certain decisions until certain ages. And so, we want to just stop these procedures from happening in Alabama.”

…The bill would make it a Class C felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to prescribe, dispense, administer, or otherwise supply opposite sex hormones or puberty-blocking medications to minors. It would also prohibit surgeries that change a minor’s anatomy for gender reassignment…Sen. Billy Beasley, D-Clayton, proposed an amendment to say that pharmacists would not be criminally liable for filling prescriptions for transgender medications for minors. The Senate voted it down 21-6. Beasley is a pharmacist.

A House committee has also approved a bill similar to Shelnutt’s after a public hearing. House Speaker Mac McCutcheon said today he did not know when that bill, sponsored by Rep. Wes Allen, R-Troy, would come to the House floor for a vote. The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for people who identify as LGBTQ, opposes the bills, saying they are discriminatory and promote misinformation that’s harmful to young people who are transgender. Allen has said gender dysphoria is a mental disorder and should be treated as such, rather than with medications that make physical changes.

Unsurprisingly, progressive groups of every stripe have come out to condemn this move, and the Yellowhammer Fund, an organization that funds abortions for impoverished women in Alabama, also took time out from funding feticide to criticize the Senate bill.

This legislation is another example of how increasingly, America is becoming two nations within one set of borders. If the Supreme Court (I presume that the ACLU and any other number of groups will be challenging this bill immediately) upholds Alabama’s right to restrict these so-called treatments, other red states will follow suit. California, New York, and other states will respond by passing legislation enshrining this sort of thing as an unalienable right, just as they’ve done with abortion is response to pro-life laws. The divide will continue to grow. Two different Americas, two radically different philosophies and ways of life.

In the meantime, this is good news for sanity, and for those who wish to see children protected.