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Ban on Transgender Surgeries for Minors Passes Arizona Legislature

March 25, 2022

By Corinne Murdock |

Governor Doug Ducey may soon sign into law a ban on transgender surgeries for minors; the Arizona House passed a Senate bill to bar surgeries for minors to attempt a gender transition on Thursday. The bill, SB1138, passed along party lines.

Major opponents of the bill among the LGBTQ community include activists from Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a national organization focused on pushing LGBTQ ideologies and activism onto children. One such activist also identified herself as a GLSEN lobbyist and community editor for several years, during which time she testified one of her daughters went through puberty and became withdrawn, depressed, and socially isolated. Young said that she encouraged her daughter to transition genders after no amount of therapy, support groups, or psychiatric medications alleviated her poor mental health. Even so, Young says her daughter doesn’t fully identify as male, but rather “male-leaning” on what they both consider the “spectrum” of gender. 

Another activist — ACLU staff attorney Chase Strangio, a transgender man known for her work defending transgender individuals, such as convicted spy Chelsea Manning — promised to mobilize efforts to convince Ducey to veto the legislation. 

The legislation almost didn’t make it through initial consideration stages in the Senate. State Senator Tyler Pace (R-Mesa) wouldn’t back the bill at first during the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, arguing that parents should have the right to make medical decisions for their children. Pace later changed his mind, citing current international standards of care from health care experts on transgenderism. At present, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) doesn’t support gender transitioning surgeries for minors. 

“There’s a certain threshold of irreversibility that can happen during a gender transition. We acknowledge as a state, and so does other very friendly transgender countries like Finland, like I brought up earlier, as well as the international organizations that say: when you get to this degree of irreversibility, it should not be made as a minor,” said Pace after changing his mind.

Just as with the House, the bill passed along party lines in the Senate.

Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.

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