Kansas Republicans push to ban gender-affirming care for trans minors, label it abusive

Three years ago Cat Poland’s son nearly died.

The Kansas mother of three told lawmakers Thursday that her now 14-year-old child attempted suicide after coming out as transgender.

She also told them that gender affirming medication, testosterone, left him “happier and healthier” than she’s seen him in years. Starting hormone therapy, Poland told The Star, wasn’t a decision her family made lightly but instead one that came after extensive therapy and detailed conversations with doctors.

But Kansas lawmakers are considering legislation that would label that care abusive and bar Poland’s son from accessing the very medication Poland says saved his life.

“I am not a perfect mother but I am certainly not an abusive one,” Poland said. “When I asked my son about this bill he said ‘it would have been abusive not to help me.’”

For the second year in a row, Kansas Republicans are pushing to ban hormone therapy and gender transition surgery for minors – referred to as gender-affirming care by practitioners. They argue that, even with the support of parents and doctors, children should not be permitted to make life-altering decisions about their healthcare.

If approved, Kansas would join a growing number of Republican states that restrict this care despite statements from major American medical associations supporting its use.

Continued legislative attacks on gender-affirming care

According to the Human Rights Campaign 22 states, including Missouri, ban gender-affirming care for minors. The organization estimates that 35% of the nation’s transgender youth live in these states.

The push comes after Kansas lawmakers passed a string of bills regulating the lives of transgender Kansans and youth last year but were unable to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill banning gender-affirming care in minors.

The latest effort is certain to face steep opposition from Kansas Democrats and, if passed, a likely veto from Kelly.

But Poland said the continued legislative attacks on transgender Kansans weigh heavily on her son.

“It’s like it’s this heavy suffocating blanket,” she said. “It darkens all the brightness, and all the progress, and all the joy that he’s made to know that these adults, who’ve never met him, probably don’t know any kids like him, are making these decisions about who he is as a person and the kind of life he can lead.”

In hearings on Thursday, LGBTQ advocates warned lawmakers the proposals would be immensely harmful to transgender children in Kansas, and that it would send a clear message they were not wanted in the state.

“When I think about how satisfied I am with my gender transition it pains me to think about that being taken away from other young Kansans,” said Anthony Alvarez, a 19-year-old transgender man from Wyandotte County.

Two approaches to restricting care

Lawmakers are considering two separate bills that would restrict healthcare for transgender youth.

One bill bars surgery for minors but allows hormone therapy so long as practitioners adhere to a specific set of care guidelines developed by the endocrinology society when providing hormone therapy to minors and adults.

A separate, broader bill, restricts hormone therapy alongside surgery. It threatens the licenses of doctors and allows for someone to sue a medical provider who gives that care for up to 30 years after it takes place. It also bars any state employee who works with children from promoting physical or social transitioning for children — which opponents say could include a public school teacher using a student’s preferred pronouns in class.

Rep. Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican, who chairs the House Health and Human Services Committee, said she expects her committee to move forward with one of the two policies or combine components of each when they act on the subject.

Advocates for restrictions on the care, however, only spoke in support of the broader proposal. Brittany Jones, a lobbyist for the Christian conservative policy group Kansas Family Voice, said the policy needed to bar hormone therapy as well as surgery.

Rep. Ron Bryce, a Coffeyville Republican who introduced the broader bill, compared hormone therapy and transition surgeries to lobotomies — a type of brain surgery that was, unsuccessfully, used in the mid-20th century to treat schizophrenia.

“Like transgender treatments, it manipulates or destroys healthy tissue in order to treat mental problems,” Bryce said, arguing the treatments weren’t safe and hadn’t been studied enough.

D.C. Hiegert, an attorney at the ACLU of Kansas, said the proposals were among the largest and most harmful anti-trans bills that had ever been introduced in Kansas. The bill limited to surgery, he said, sets a dangerous precedent by codifying a specific medical guideline into law. The broader measure, he said, is written so broadly it could keep teachers and foster care social workers from referring to a transgender youth by their preferred name and pronouns.

“These bills are life-threatening and they cause serious harm for trans youth in our state and for Kansas families in general,” he said.

Concerns about regret

Advocates of the proposals frame it as an issue of child safety. Chloe Cole, a California woman who detransitioned and has since traveled nationally advocating for bans on gender-affirming care, told lawmakers that doctors failed her by pointing her towards gender transition rather than mental healthcare.

Ivan Abdouch, a fellow for Do No Harm, an organization that pushes for bans on gender-affirming care nationwide, said the risk was too great that a minor would make the wrong choice and be harmed in the long run.

“When physicians and parents are willing to risk this kind of potential harm to their kids, someone has to step in,” Abdouch, who is a former provider of gender-affirming care for adults, said.

But the Academy of Pediatrics contends youth should have access to “developmentally appropriate” gender-affirming care. Amanda Mogoi, a Wichita nurse who is certified to provide that care said patients don’t jump into hormone therapy and surgery lightly.

Transgender Kansans who testified against the bill described extensive consultations with doctors alongside their parents before choosing to move forward.

“No youth are moving forward with gender-affirming care without the support and legal informed consent of all of their adult guardians,” Mogoi said.