Missouri lawmakers endorsed a pair of bills this month that would ban irreversible transgender care for minors and restrict transgender athletes from playing in sports that do not align with their biological sex.
Reportedly, the approval of the bills came after a 13-hour Democratic filibuster. One of the pieces of legislation, S.B. 49 permanently bans gender transition surgeries for children, hormone therapy drugs and puberty blockers until 2027. This came after Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican issued an emergency rule on gender transition care for minors (via USA Today):
Attorney General Andrew Bailey issued the emergency regulations on Monday to halt "experimental gender transition interventions" for minors. He outlined a series of required "guardrails" for any treatment for minors, including informed consent and an 18-month waiting period to receive the care.
The emergency rule must be approved by the Secretary of State's office before being published in the Missouri register and going into effect.
"I am dedicated to using every legal tool at my disposal to stand in the gap and protect children from being subject to inhumane science experiments," Bailey said in a statement.
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Bailey's regulation would prevent providers from offering gender-affirming procedures if they do not:
Perform a full psychological/psychiatric assessment, including at least 15 hourly sessions over the span of at least 18 months, to identify whether the patient has any other mental health comorbidities;
Treat and resolve existing mental health comorbidities;
Track all adverse effects from any course of covered gender-affirming procedures for at least 15 years from the start of the intervention;
Obtain and keep on file informed written consent;
Ensure that the patient has a comprehensive screening to determine whether or not they have autism;
Ensure at least annually that the patient's gender identity is not the result of a "social contagion."
Last month, Townhall reported how Jamie Reed, a former healthcare worker at a transgender clinic spoke out in a bombshell report in The Free Press about how “morally and medically appalling” “gender-affirming” health care is on young people. Reed previously worked as a case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. There, Reed worked for four years and saw “around a thousand” young people who were struggling with their gender identity.
“I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm.’ Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care,” Reed wrote in her piece.
In Reed’s piece, she said that kids easily started “gender-affirming” treatment after a couple of quick visits with a therapist. Any staffer who raised concerns was labeled a “transphobe.”
“The mental health of these kids was deeply concerning—there were diagnoses like schizophrenia, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and more. Often they were already on a fistful of pharmaceuticals,” Reed explained. “This was tragic, but unsurprising given the profound trauma some had been through. Yet no matter how much suffering or pain a child had endured, or how little treatment and love they had received, our doctors viewed gender transition—even with all the expense and hardship it entailed—as the solution.”
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