Orders like the one issued by Abbott have strategic advantages for their proponents. Studies have found receiving gender-affirming care has significant mental health advantages for transgender children. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, supports gender-affirming care. While there are potential side effects to a child’s potential future fertility, it’s an area that is still being studied and experts believe the benefits of care - especially to transgender children’s mental health - outweigh potential downsides. “Beyond the obvious harm of permanently sterilizing a child, these procedures and treatments can cause side effects and harms beyond permanent infertility, including serious mental health effects” and a range of health consequences, Paxton wrote.īoth puberty blockers and hormone therapy aim to give transgender and nonbinary children treatment without permanently committing them to transitioning their gender.
Gender-affirming care violates a person’s “fundamental right to procreation” and raises “issues of physical and emotional harm associated with these procedures,” Paxton wrote. In a February opinion, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued giving puberty-blocking drugs or hormone therapy to minors can cause significant harm that amounts to child abuse. He has not been following the order because he believes the legal reasoning behind it is unsound. Since everyone in Texas is a mandatory reporter, Pittman himself is supposed to report the families with transgender children he represents to social services or risk losing his license. “Those doctors are being put in a situation of, ‘Do I run the risk of being sued for following this law by a patient who says I’m harming him or her?’” “It’s an extreme mess, because one of the problems is that if somebody has had these puberty blockers or hormone replacements started, stopping them immediately is problematic,” said Ian Pittman, a Texas lawyer who represents families with LGBTQ children. Two major Texas hospitals, Children’s Medical Center Dallas and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, paused or eliminated their treatment for transgender youth soon after the order.
#Tattletale license#
Abbott’s order reworks mandatory reporting to include reporting about kids receiving gender-affirming treatment - so doctors or pharmacists risk losing their license if they do not report a transgender patient. In Texas, every adult is considered a “mandatory reporter” who must report signs of child abuse to the state. Greg Abbott that requires people to report any families providing gender-affirming treatment (like hormone therapy or puberty-blocking medications) for transgender children to social services.Ībbott’s order - which is currently on hold after a Texas judge issued an injunction - quickly had a chilling effect on medical services for transgender and nonbinary children. Texas has recently pioneered two aggressive social policies, S.B. “A private bounty scheme could easily be modified to target persons who criticize the government, refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated, make negligent or harmless false statements on public issues or engage in any other protected but disfavored conduct.” “The most useful way to appreciate the significance of this case is to stop thinking of it as an abortion case and recognize it for what it is: a challenge to a broadly applicable tactic for avoiding federal judicial review of state efforts to circumvent the rights of its residents,” the pro-gun Firearms Policy Coalition wrote. 8 case, a gun rights group filed an amicus brief arguing people’s constitutional rights are being threatened by the law. Increasingly, his concerns are shared by activists across the political spectrum.
To attack any right protected by the constitution, a state can just say, ‘Well, we’re not enforcing a prohibition on the exercise of that right, we’re just allowing private citizens to do so,’” Hearron said. “This strategy is dangerous not only for reproductive rights, but in all different manners. 8 to sue those who aid in obtaining abortions after six weeks - could easily be harnessed for other issues, warned Marc Hearron, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which led the legal challenge against the Texas law. If not halted by the court system, the approach - particularly, the “private lawsuit” strategy used by S.B. Their strategies echo other kinds of citizen vigilante-ism like the #MeToo movement, where women publicly named men who sexually assaulted them. This year, bills that either have new reporting requirements or encourage private lawsuits have been introduced in at least 20 states across the country, according to an analysis by Grid.
0 kommentar(er)
