‘You are voting to kill me.’ Lodge should kill bill to imprison parents of trans kids
Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, should refuse to hear HB675. Any other course of action would be rank hypocrisy, given her past record.
The unconscionable bill, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, would allow prosecution of the families and doctors of transgender minors who choose to receive medical treatment. Those parents and doctors would face felony charges and could receive a sentence of life in prison. That would be the penalty as well if they took their children out of state to receive such care.
The bill has already passed the House with near-unanimous Republican support.
Proponents of the bill focused as much attention as possible on gender confirmation surgery for minors.
That is a smokescreen. As representatives of the Idaho Medical Association testified, such surgery is not performed on minors in Idaho.
Rather, the crux of the bill is banning puberty blockers, the least invasive form of medical treatment for minors with gender dysphoria which does not respond to therapy.
An adult trans woman who was administered puberty blockers has much less chance of showing male secondary sexual features like an Adam’s apple, a deep voice and facial hair. Likewise, an adult trans man won’t have developed breasts that require surgical removal.
Puberty blockers are not administered lightly, but they are also not a one-way road. If a child ceases taking them, puberty will resume. They allow a child with severe gender dysphoria, with the help of their family and a large medical team, time to make a decision.
And they prevent terrible, sometimes fatal, psychological symptoms in children with severe gender dysphoria. A recent study showed a 60% reduction in depression and a 73% reduction in suicidal thoughts among trans youth who received gender affirming health care.
The testimony from families who would be impacted by the law was clear and unambiguous.
“I have struggled with gender dysphoria for as long as I can remember, and as I got closer and closer to puberty, my mental state kept getting worse and worse,” testified Eve, a 16-year-old trans girl. “It had gotten to a point where I planned on killing myself if I had to go through male puberty. The only reason that I am alive today is that I was able to get the care that I needed.”
She had a simple message for the members of the committee.
“You are voting to kill me and other kids like me,” she said.
A majority of the House State Affairs Committee voted to do just that. And then nearly every Republican in the House voted to do the same. Only Reps. Ned Burns, R-Bellevue, and Fred Wood, R-Burley, summoned the courage to behave morally.
Lodge, the chair of the Senate State Affairs Committee, should join them and refuse to hear the bill. It will take courage, but it will save kids like Eve. And it will prevent her parents from facing a life term.
Lodge has drawn an utterly unambiguous line in the sand on issues of parental medical rights.
Lodge was steadfast in her opposition to legislation that would have prosecuted parents who seek faith healing, rather than medical care, for their children. She became the most visible and committed opponent of revoking the faith-healing exemption in the Legislature.
“To prosecute faithful, caring, loving parents, who truly believe that the Lord heals his children is not for me to decide,” Lodge told the Idaho Press.
Can Lodge now allow loving parents to be imprisoned for life for seeking treatments they, their children and leading medical organizations judge to be the best standard of care?