Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to criminalise life-saving healthcare for trans kids
Marjorie Taylor Greene will introduce a bill that would make it a felony for trans youth to access gender-affirming healthcare and bans “colleges from teaching it”. (Getty/Brandon Bell)
Notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene plans to introduce legislation that would criminalise vital gender-affirming care for trans youth.
Greene announced the hateful bill during an appearance on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight show. The far-right wing politician likened gender-affirming healthcare – which has been described by scientists as ‘life-saving’ and backed by leading medical groups like the American Medical Association – to “child abuse”.
Greene believes it is “disgusting” and “absolutely appalling” to provide affirming medical care for trans and non-binary youth. She discussed how her new bill would providing gender-affirming care – including medications, puberty blockers and surgeries – to minors a felony.
“I’m introducing a bill called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” she said. “It would create a law that would cause it to be a class C felony for any person involved in so-called gender-affirming care… anything involving any youth under the age of 18.”
Greene later added on Twitter that her bill, which is set to be introduced Friday (19 August), will block “all taxpayer-funding” for gender-affirming care for minors, ban “colleges from teaching it” and prohibit “foreign aliens who commit” such care from “entering the US”.
It also blocks all taxpayer-funding for these barbaric procedures, bans colleges from teaching it, and prohibits foreign aliens who commit these appalling acts from entering the U.S. https://t.co/vd0IVmOPSZ
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@RepMTG) August 19, 2022
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s announcement came amid a national push from right-wingers targeting trans youth and the healthcare providers who help them.
Republican-backed bills targeting trans healthcare have been introduced in multiple states with Arkansas being the first state to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth in 2021. Similar bills limiting gender-affirming medical care for trans minors have been signed into law in Tennessee and Arizona.
In April, Alabama became the first state to impose criminal penalties for such care. However, two families of trans youth, two doctors and a coalition of civil and LGBTQ legal rights advocates have since brought legal action against the state to fight the cruel anti-trans bill.
Conservative outrage over gender-affirming medical care has been linked to harassment, abuse and death threats sent to healthcare providers at Boston Children’s Hospital.
A campaign led by the right-wing media, Libs of TikTok and the veritable who’s who of the conservative world spread misinformation about the hospital’s gender health programme online.
Boston Children’s hospital said in a statement on Twitter that it has been the “target of a large volume of hostile internet activity, phone calls and harassing emails including threats of violence” towards clinicians and staff.
“We are deeply concerned by these attacks on our clinicians and staff fueled by misinformation and a lack of understanding and respect for our transgender community,” the hospital said.
“We condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms, and we reject the false narratives upon which they are based.”
pic.twitter.com/Sx3ATUDxSL— Boston Children's (@BostonChildrens) August 16, 2022
Tens of thousands of trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming youth risk losing access to this vital healthcare as a direct result of Republican-led attempts to ban such care, according to a study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
According to the report, an estimated 53,800 trans kids aged 13 to 17 live in 15 states that have either banned access to gender-affirming care or are considering such laws. This is over a third of the estimated 150,000 trans youth in the United States.
A further 4,400 trans youth adults living in Alabama, North Carolina and Oklahoma were also at risk due to conservative lawmakers efforts to ban gender-affirming medical care for people aged between 18 and 20.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a stark example of the intersection between homophobic and transphobic rhetoric and the spread of health misinformation.
Greene blamed trans men for a nationwide tampon shortage despite it being caused by supply chain issues. She also claimed straight people will go extinct in “four or five generations” and said her husband would violently “beat” a trans person “into the ground” if they worked at a theoretical summer camp her daughter attended.
The far-right politician also falsely described monkeypox as “basically a sexually transmitted disease” and disgustingly called for people to “laugh” at the outbreak. She also tweeted a false claim that monkeypox is an STI to link monkeypox and child sexual abuse.
