House Bill 71 criminalizes gender-affirming health care for youth who have gender dysphoria. The bill specifically bans puberty blockers and hormones for patients under age 18. It also bans surgeries, which already do not fall within Idaho’s standard of care for transgender youth and are not performed in Idaho.
If we can agree that gender dysphoria is a serious mental illness, I have no idea how we got to the place where the “best” medical intervention is (1) to provide affirmation and encouragement of that mental illness, (2) to begin patients on a series of unregulated, off-use drugs that frequently cause severe osteoporosis in girls, loss of sexual function, and permanent infertility, and (3) to surgically remove health, functioning tissue….in children. This protocol should be last resort medical care in adults (who, at the end of the day, have a right to do with themselves as the wish). It should be nowhere near children.
I will not be surprised if we look back on this era of medical butchery as we do on bloodletting, Thalidomide, frontal lobotomies, and routine hysterectomies. Already England, France, Sweden, The Netherlands, Finland, Poland, and Hungary have taken steps like the State of Idaho to limit or bar “gender affirming care” for youth. The rest of America should do the same.