LINK Mississippi enacts ban on gender-affirming care for children | PBS NewsHour
JACKSON, Miss. 
— Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill Tuesday to ban gender-affirming hormones or surgery in the state for anyone younger than 18, part of a broad effort in conservative states to restrict transgender athletes, gender-affirming care and drag shows.
Reeves, who is running for reelection this year, said “radical activists” are telling children they are in the wrong bodies and are “just a surgery away from happiness.”
“This is truly scary stuff that’s being pushed upon our kids and, yes, their loving parents,” Reeves said. “They’re being taken advantage of, all so some can push their warped view on gender or appear to be ‘woke’ for their friends.”
The new Mississippi law took effect immediately. In 2021, Reeves signed a law to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ or women’s sports teams.
The Republican governors of South Dakota and Utah have signed bans on gender-affirming care this year, and the Republican governor of Tennessee is expected to do so. Judges have temporarily blocked similar laws in Arkansas and Alabama.
Reeves signed the Mississippi bill into law less than two weeks after transgender teenagers, their families and others who support them protested against the measure.
Across the U.S. this year, at least 150 bills targeting transgender people have been introduced, which is the highest in a single year, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Mickie Stratos — who is president of The Spectrum Center of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which provides health services and advocacy for LGBTQ people — said Reeves’ decision to sign the bill “is an act of violence.”
“He and the lawmakers who pushed this bill in Mississippi are willfully ignoring the unique needs of transgender young people, interfering with their medical care and sending a stigmatizing, exclusionary message,” Stratos said in a statement Tuesday.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.I'm unsure there is a good position on this but non-adults can not, and should not, be able to sign contracts. That will hurt some but help most children from being exploited in many sectors. If one can't sign a medical agreement then one doesn't get surgery.
rainmanjr
Level 8
Mar 1, 2023
1
The issue is hormone adjustments and puberty blockers, not surgeries which are almost always done in adulthood.
It is a big deal for a transgender person to have to experience full puberty as the gender they were born into rather than the gende they identify as.
There is a great deal of screening that proceeds any diagnosis and gender affirming care.
When I was in my 20's, a friend of my partner at the time couldn't find a doctor for gender affirming care and so she bought hormone treatments in Mexico. Now unfortunately taking female hormones without also taken blood thinners can result in blood clots and our friend ended up having stroke. Now, why do I tell this story? Because prohibiting legitimate gender affirming care will only create a black market for the drugs and hormones, and it is dangerous to attempt treatment without a doctor's supervision. They will in effect cause a lot of harm by making gender affirming care illegal. Kids can get virtually any illegal substance they desire, but how safe will it be?
@snytiger6 I'm not a biologist or Doctor (a profession that I have very little respect for to begin with) so am unqualified to make such judgments. I am a citizen who believes in not causing people harm through denying their freedoms of choice or encouraging misguided ideas. What people choose to do with an adult mind is their own business, even if misguided, but not as a child. Possibly the boy just admires mom's power over dad or the girl only wants male power within society (school for them)?Maybe I'm wrong but puberty needs to happen so blocking it seems to me an unnatural thing to do (bound to cause further problems which complicate an already complex thing). Possibly we (as a society) should get advanced enough to accept however an adult presents themselves and refrain from judgments on them? This seems to me good advice overall as humans have zero credibility for making judgments on other humans.
Life is cruel, as well as glorious, and many will be harmed no matter what the policy is so I'm unmoved by that argument. If one discards honest evaluation of biologic advice in order to satisfy their own mind then their decisions may be harmful to themselves. Such is the nature of drug culture and risk. Nor am I suggesting that gender affirming care should be illegal. Only that it's ill considered at this time because we have bad ideas about gender issues to begin with. Making things illegal only increases desire for them and it's desire that I caution against satisfying in children. They desire a diet of sugar and we (especially women) regularly indulge that but it's done them no favor.
Our culture is a very sick one but liberal thinking tends to brush over that but society demonstrates it to be true. Until adults become healthier I see no justification for them to decide what's healthy for children, either. A good sign of adult health would be a functioning society which uses resources wisely and with restraint. Liberals are no better at that than Cons, IMO, but believe themselves to be so with just as much fervor. I think we harm kids enough with our fancy ideas.
@rainmanjr Professionals have studied trans kids and over time developed the gender affirming care as the best way to deal with it. And, it has been determined that gender affirming care should start early, in childhood, if and only if the child and parents have come to terms with the transgender identity, and the individual concerned has passed through the proper screening processes.
Prior to the 1970's mistakes were made. By the end of the 1980's they pretty much eliminated prior mistake, and the concerns you noted above have been eliminated in the adjusted screening processes.
The current republican attacks on the trans population are just easy political targets, mostly because so few people understand the diagnosis or the processes to correct the problems. If I didn't have a trans friend in college, and a few more after college, I may not have an understanding of it either.
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