By Corinne Murdock |

The Arizona Senate passed a bill banning gender reassignment surgeries for minors late last week after State Senator Tyler Pace (R-Mesa) switched his vote. Pace voted against the original version of the bill during the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. At the time, Pace argued that parents should have the right to make those medical decisions for their children.

Pace agreed to support the bill after he authored a strike-all amendment modifying it, which the committee approved. The amendment removed language prohibiting physicians or health care professionals from referring minors to health care professionals for gender transition procedures. It also removed language prohibiting government funds from going to entities, organizations, or individuals that provide gender transition procedures to minors. 

When the committee reconsidered the bill as rewritten under Pace’s amendment, Pace cited the international standards of care of World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to justify his changed mind, noting that they don’t support transgender surgeries for minors. Pace clarified that physicians who implement gender reassignment surgeries on minors would be in violation of international best standards of care and subject to sanctions otherwise.

“There’s a certain threshold of irreversibility that can happen during a gender transition. We acknolwedge 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.

There was disagreement in the committee between State Senators Nancy Barto (R-Phoenix) and Raquel Terán (D-Phoenix); Terán wanted to hear more public testimony, but Barto said that they heard almost 3 hours on the same subject the previous week. 

The final Senate version of the bill removed the amendment stipulation that a minor must not have lived continuously in the gender role congruent with their gender identity for 12 months in order for the surgical prohibition to apply.

During the Senate floor vote, Democrats said the legislation opposed equality and attacked minors. State Senator Christine Marsh (D-Phoenix) said the bill was an “unnecessary,” masked effort to choose “buzz-words out of thin air” for the true objective of attacking children.

State Senator Rosanna Gabaldon (D-Sahuarita) claimed that transgender procedures merely prevented puberty. Gabaldon didn’t broach the subject of reported adverse effects of hormone blockers and therapies or gender reassignment surgeries.

With the amended language, the bill passed along party lines — no Republicans objected to it.

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