Lawmaker, Political Science Professor weigh in
By: Mary Wilson, Opinions Editor
Missouri politicians have introduced several pieces of legislation that aim to prevent transgender youth under 18 from receiving hormonal or surgical treatment.
According to the bill summary, Senate Bill 848, introduced by republican Senator William Eigel would make it so “any health care personnel licensed by a state licensing board in this state shall be prohibited from administering puberty blockers, prescribing hormone therapy” or performing gender-confirmation surgeries “for the purpose of gender reassignment for a child.”
The bill goes on to specify that any medical professional who “willfully and knowingly does or assists any prohibited action under subsection 1” would be subjected to lose their license or application for license, as well as that parents or guardians would be “reported to the children’s division” if “he or she obtains medical or surgical treatment prohibited under subsection 1 of this section for his or her child.”
Senator Eigel, who represents St. Charles in the 23rd district, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A similar bill, House Bill 2051, introduced by republican State Representative Suzie Pollock, would make it so that “a person commits the offense of abuse or neglect of a child if such a person assists, coerces, or provides for a child who is under eighteen years of age to undergo any surgical or hormonal treatment for the purpose of gender reassignment.”
Senator Eigel is not a medical professional. Representative Pollock is a registered Cardiovascular Invasive Specialist, according to her biography on the Missouri House website. Cardiovascular Invasive Specialists “work with heart and circulation issues.” When asked for comment, Representative Pollock’s office sent a prepared statement via email.
“My only goal with this piece of legislation is to protect the well-being of children who are too young to make decisions that will have lifelong repercussions…somehow there are those who want us to accept that kids who still believe in Santa Claus are mentally and emotionally prepared to make the life-altering decision to change their gender,” the statement begins. It goes on, “As someone who wants to see each and every young person have a happy and healthy childhood, I think it’s important we protect them from being forced into making decisions that only adults are equipped to make.”
South Dakota and South Carolina also have similar bills in their legislature. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a professional membership group with over 67,000 members in the USA, Canada and Mexico, released a policy statement in September of 2018 “urging support and care of transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents.”
The AAP’s policy statement says that “adolescents and adults who identify as transgender have high rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm and suicide.”
The statement cites a cohort study that found that “56 percent of youth who identified as transgender reported previous suicidal ideation, and 31 percent reported a previous suicide attempt, compared with 20 percent and 11 percent among matched youth who identified as cisgender, respectively.”
CNN published a piece citing a January 2020 study in the journal “Pediatrics,” which included a study showing that “those who underwent the puberty-blocking treatment had lower odds of lifetime suicidal ideation and past-month severe psychological distress, compared to those who wanted the treatment but did not receive it.”
Both pieces of legislation contradict the suggestions made by the Endocrine Society. The Endocrine Society released a statement in 2017 that “adolescents who meet the diagnostic criteria… fulfill criteria for treatment and are requesting treatment should initially undergo treatment to suppress pubertal development.”
Meramec professor of political science, John Messmer, said that the bills are “definitely a constitutional question. Whenever you’re talking about something that is a fundamental liberty, you’ve got a question of ‘is there a due process right here?’ Not only of the children, but of the parents. There is precedent of parents being allowed to raise their children the way they see fit, and that includes making health decisions for them. If you have a law that says ‘No you can’t in this circumstance,’ I can see a lawyer arguing it’s a constitutional issue.”
“It [the bills] would absolutely harm transgender youth,” said Logan Crews, a patient at Washington University’s gender clinic and a freshman at Trinity University in San Antonio.
Messmer said that once bills go through hearings, the next step is an executive session in a committee to work on the bill. Next, there’s a vote. If the bill makes it out of committee, there’s a vote with the full chamber. If the bill passes, the process repeats on the other side.
“Given everything we know,” the statement from Representative Pollock’s office says, “I believe it’s important that we put strong protections in place that will ensure young people aren’t pushed into changing their gender during a time in their life when they’re clearly not equipped to make such a decision.”
“[If the bills pass] kids will somehow have to survive years of depression in their bodies before they can make their own choices…and the sad reality is that a lot of these kids don’t make it through those years,” Crews said.
