North Dakota governor signs law limiting trans health care : NPR

Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has signed a bill that restricts transgender health care in the state, immediately making it a crime to provide gender-affirming care to people under 18. years.

Gender-affirming care for minors has been available in the United States for more than a decade and is endorsed by major medical associations, but has come under increasing attack in many conservative legislatures, including Dakota’s. North, where lawmakers passed at least three anti-trans bills this year.

The measure Burgum signed on Wednesday received unvetoed support from GOP lawmakers — though some Republicans voted against it, alongside all Democrats.

In a statement released Thursday morning, Burgum said the law “is intended to protect children from the life-changing ramifications of sex reassignment surgeries,” but he added that medical professionals testified that such surgeries do not have not been and are not practiced on minors in the North. Dakota.

He said the law still allows drug treatment for precocious puberty and other rare circumstances with parental consent, and that minors currently receiving gender-affirming care will still be able to receive treatment.

“Moving forward, thoughtful debate around these complex medical policies should show compassion and understanding for all of North Dakota’s young people and their families,” he said.

The new law takes effect immediately and allows prosecutors to charge a health care provider with a felony – up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine – for performing sex reassignment surgery on a minor.

It also allows prosecutors to charge a supplier with a misdemeanor — up to 360 days in jail and a $3,000 fine — for giving gender-affirming drugs, like puberty blockers, to a trans child.

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota denounced the new law as “a vast excess of government that infringes on the basic rights of parents” and violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process by singling out ban gender-affirming care.

“By signing this bill, Governor Burgum has instructed the government to make life-saving decisions traditionally reserved for parents in North Dakota,” Cody Schuler, the group’s advocacy manager, said in a statement. “This ban won’t stop North Dakotans from being trans, but it will deny them essential support that helps struggling transgender youth grow into successful transgender adults.”

Earlier this month, Burgum also signed a ban on transgender athletes after also passing the House and Senate with anti-veto majorities. In 2021, Burgum vetoed a bill that would have imposed a ban on transgender athletes at the time, but House and Senate lawmakers didn’t have enough votes at the time to overturn his veto.

North Dakota joins at least 13 other states that have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for minors.

Republican lawmakers across the country have advanced hundreds of measures aimed at nearly every facet of trans existence this year.

This includes banning gender-affirming medical care for minors, restrictions on the types of restrooms transgender people can use, measures restricting classroom teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity, and bills that would weed out transgender students who want teachers to address them by the pronouns they use.

The Food and Drug Administration approved puberty blockers 30 years ago to treat children with precocious puberty — a condition that causes sexual development to begin much earlier than usual. Sex hormones – synthetic forms of estrogen and testosterone – were approved decades ago to treat hormonal disorders or as birth control pills.

The FDA hasn’t approved the drugs specifically to treat gender-inquiring young people, but they have been used for this purpose “off-label” for many years, a common and accepted practice for many medical conditions. Doctors who treat transgender patients say decades of use are proof that the treatments aren’t experimental.

Research has shown that transgender youth and adults can be prone to suicidal behaviors when forced to live according to the gender they were assigned at birth. And critics of the legislation to restrict gender-affirming care for children say it’s an attempt by the Conservatives to motivate their voter base.

Proponents of the measure have raised concerns about children changing their minds. Yet evidence suggests that detransition is not as common as opponents of transgender medical treatment for young people claim, although few studies exist and they have their weaknesses.