On Thursday, Alabama legislators approved one of the most draconian anti-trans bills in the country seeking to criminalize gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
The bill comes amid a wave of anti-trans legislation that has swept conservative states from Arizona to Texas, prompting widespread alarm among medical experts and the transgender community. In February, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott urged the Department of Family and Protective Services to reclassify gender-affirming care as child abuse, leading it to initiate investigations into parents with transgender children. (The directive was later temporarily enjoined by a state court.)
But even at a time of rising anti-trans sentiment, the Alabama bill stands out as extreme. If Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signs it into law, medical practitioners who provide hormone treatment, puberty blockers, and gender reassignment surgery to minors would be threatened with a felony charge carrying up to a decade in prison.
The bill was one among a bevy that the Alabama legislature approved yesterday, designed to punish queer youth and the people who support them. Alabama lawmakers also voted to advance legislation that forces trans students to use locker rooms and restrooms for the sex they were assigned at birth. An amendment to that bill added language that resembles Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, restricting discussions of gender and sexuality from kindergarten through fifth grade.
My colleague Samantha Michaels spoke to David Fuller, a Republican-voting veteran police sergeant in Gadsden, Alabama, for a heart-wrenching story we published last month. Fuller’s trans daughter came out when she was 16. He told Michaels:
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