Photo: Florida State Capitol. Credit: Stuart Seeger/flickr
A Florida Republican lawmaker who’s mounting a run for Congress has filed legislation that would prosecute doctors who prescribe gender-affirming treatments to transgender children.
The bill, introduced by State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R-Howey-in-the-Hills), would impose criminal penalties on any medical provider who performs transition-related surgical procedures on minors, as well as those who prescribe hormones or puberty blockers to transgender individuals under age 18.
Those providers found to violate the law would be charged with a first-degree misdemeanor, meaning they could face up to a year in prison or a fine of $1,000.
The only exception the bill contains is if a person is born intersex, in which case parents can seek out surgery for their child — although such surgeries disregard the child’s own agency for the parents’ personal preferences, and can sometimes lead to gender dysphoria later if the sex “chosen” by the parents does not match an individual’s gender identity.
Sabatini previously introduced a similar bill during the regular legislative session, but the bill never received a committee hearing — ostensibly because of Sabatini’s rocky relationship with his fellow Republicans, and not out of any misgivings on the part of GOP lawmakers about intervening in personal medical decisions, according to the Florida Politics website.
Sabatini told the website that he refiled the legislation after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) promised, in an interview with the Daily Caller in June, to support any bill that would ban gender-affirming surgeries for transgender children. DeSantis also signed a bill earlier this year to bar transgender youth from competing on sports teams that match their gender identity.
Sabatini, who is running for Congress against U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D) — whose district is expected to be gerrymandered in order to favor Republicans — appears to be using the bill to shore up his conservative credentials. Many conservatives, not only in Florida but across the country, claim that transition-related treatments — including rarely-performed surgical interventions — are irreversible, harmful, and akin to sterilization or disfigurement. Thus far, only Arkansas and Tennessee have passed laws barring gender-affirming treatments for minors, although similar bills have been introduced in nearly two dozen other states.
“This has always been the right thing to do; it should’ve been passed years ago. This is a bipartisan-common sense bill,” Sabatini told Orlando CBS affiliate WKMG-TV, adding: “I’m against the forced castration and sterilization of children—anyone who disagrees with that is mentally insane.”
Heather Wilkie, the executive director of the Zebra Coalition, a nonprofit serving LGBTQ youth, said there needs to be more education for the general population to understand the nuances of gender-affirming surgery, especially since intersex individuals can also identify as transgender or nonbinary.
“It’s a complete double-standard. He’s trying to pick and choose who can receive gender-affirming surgery,” Wilkie said of Sabatini’s bill. “It’s more complex than saying, ‘This population can get surgery, but this population can’t.”
Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando), an LGBTQ ally, told WKMG that opponents of the bill should view it as a serious threat that has a good chance of passing and being signed into law during next year’s legislative session.
“It’s disgusting; it’s a slap in the face to trans kids and parents. What’s so arrogant is that it’s supposed to be about trans kids’ safety, but it gets in the way of doctors and parents who want best for their kids,” Eskamani said of Sabtaini. “He’s saying he doesn’t want parents or kids to make these decisions, but it’s OK for a politician to decide?”
According to polling data recently released by Gallup, a razor-thin majority of Americans continue to believe changing one’s gender is morally wrong.
The same data, from Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted in May, show a substantial majority of Americans are opposed to bans on gender-affirming care for minors.
While this polling is relatively in line with data from since 2021, the independent Trans Legislation Tracker shows a clear increase in anti-Trans legislation starting in 2020, with 85 bills, versus 32 in 2019 and 155 in 2021.
A Japanese high court ruled that a transgender woman should be able to change their gender legally, as listed on their family registry, without having to undergo surgery, as currently required by law.
Under a 2004 law, five conditions must be met before a person who has socially transitioned can have their gender identity legally recognized in Japan.
Among those conditions are a "sterility requirement" and an "appearance requirement" to have genitalia resembling those of their desired gender.
Taken together, those have been called a "surgical requirement," notes the Japan Times.
After a Senate committee attached two amendments to the annual defense bill, the United States is closer to prohibiting coverage for gender-affirming care for transgender military members and transgender dependents of active-duty service members.
During a closed-door markup of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Senate Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to "prohibit the use of funds available to the Department of Defense and any Department of Defense facility to perform or facilitate sex change surgeries."
It means that any transgender adult serving in the Armed Forces will not be able to obtain coverage for gender confirmation surgeries under TRICARE, the Department of Defense's health insurance program, and will be forced to pay out of pocket if they wish to pursue surgical interventions.
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