Package of Bills Introduced in Michigan House and Senate Aim to Ban Gender Transition Treatment for Minors

by J.D. Davidson

Michigan could join a growing list of states that ban gender transition procedures for minors.

The package of bills introduced in both the House and Senate would stop health care providers from prescribing puberty blockers and hormone treatments. Also banned would be surgeries for sterilization and to alter genital appearance.

“It is time for the experimentation on children in the name of care to come to an end,” said Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles. “Children are not born in the wrong body. No one has the right to maim a healthy child’s body to try to achieve the unachievable.”

Overall, 27 states have laws or policies that either ban or limit gender affirming care for minors, including Ohio.

Ohio’s law, however, continues to be under a court challenge after a judge blocked the ban on puberty blockers, saying other drugs are not banned for minors with parental consent.

The legislation would give patients more opportunity for medical malpractice damages and require health insurance companies to cover costs of detransition.

Recently, according to Paquette and Sen Thomas Albert, R-Lowell, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a review of gender dysphoria in minors. The operations and medications cited in the report would be banned under Michigan’s bill.

Jamie Reed, who exposed issues at pediatric gender clinics after working as a case manager at Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, pushed for the legislation alongside the lawmakers.

“It is critical that legislative bodies step in to protect children in this state from these dangerous and reckless practices,” Reed said at a press conference on Wednesday discussing Paquette’s legislation. “I was complicit in harming patients because the protocol itself harms patients. There is no safe or legal way to sterilize a child, and there is no safe way to medically disrupt a functioning endocrine system.”