A Dozen Michigan Lawmakers Co-Sponsored Bill to Bar Physicians From Providing Surgical and Hormone Treatment to Transitioning Minors

by Anna Liz Nichols

More than a dozen Republican lawmakers in Michigan have signed onto a bill to bar physicians from performing gender-affirming care for transitioning minor patients.

This effort follows multiple executive orders from President Donald Trump asserting the “biological reality of sex”, threatening to revoke federal funding from medical providers offering gender-affirming care to children, directing trangender athletes to be removed from women’s sports, barring transgender service people from military service and directing the U.S. Government to recognize “female” and “male” as the only two sexes.

The bill on health care introduced last week, House Bill 4190, would ban gender-affirming surgical care, as well as hormone therapies for minor patients. Under the bill, a physician could continue prescribing hormone treatments if the patient has been a resident and began treatment before the bill’s effective date and if the stoppage of such treatment would cause harm to the minor.

During a news conference to call on Michigan to bar transgender athletes from competing on girls youth sports teams, lead sponsor on the House bill, Rep. Jason Woolford (R-Howell), said Michigan, which helped put Trump back in the White House, has made its voice known on what he called “radical transgender ideology” in government.

“…from the State House to the White House, we are saying that we will no longer allow our daughters and women to be taken advantage of by insecure men, haters of women, radical transgender ideology and those who choose to stand in silence,” Woolford said. “We today are no longer standing in silence for our women and children.”

Trump’s executive order asserting that the United States would not fund gender-affirming care has resulted in even blue states like Michigan seeing stoppages in care for transgender patients. Two federal judges have put pauses on Trump’s order to restrict gender-affirming care, but still health systems are in limbo with taking on new patients who could be harmed by potential sudden stoppages of care.

Erin Knott, executive director of Equality Michigan, has said banning gender affirming care places transgender individuals at increased risk of harms including depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts or behavior, adding that the best way to protect the health and wellbeing of transgender people is to “ensure that they can continue to access essential, age-appropriate medical care from licensed clinicians practicing according to the well-established standards of care.”