Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed on Friday a bill into law that will criminalize gender-affirming health care for transgender people under the age of 18, despite warnings from both medical and mental health care professionals who say gender-affirming care can help prevent depression and suicide.
"I believe very strongly that if the good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl," Ivey said in a statement. "We should especially protect our children from these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life."
The Alabama governor also signed a second bill on Friday that will ban transgender students from using whatever sex-based school facility best aligns with their gender identity, as well as ban the discussion of sexual orientartion and gender identity in grades K-5. The bill mirrors Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ Parental Rights in Education act, which is now known across social media as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Critics of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and those adjacent to it say that these bills are pretending to address an issue that doesn’t exist. A 2018 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law said there are no increase in safety risks when transgender persons are allowed to access public facilities that align with their gender identities.
“The level of legislative overreach into the practice of medicine is unprecedented. And never before has legislative overreach come into pediatric examination rooms to shut down the parent voice in medical decision making between a parent, their pediatrician and their child,” Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, a medical provider, told the Associated Press in an interview.
The new law will become effective in less than 30 days, on May 8, but will most likely face challenges in court by civil rights groups. The American Civil Liberties Union has vowed to challenge the law in court. Meanwhile, families with transgender teens have already begun to sue the state of Alabama in federal court on Monday.
One set of parents pursuing the lawsuit said they were fearful that their transgender daughter would try to commit suicide or harm herself in some way if she was no longer allowed access to the puberty blockers she has already been taking for the past year.
“Transgender youth are a part of Alabama, and they deserve the same privacy, access to treatment, and data-driven health care from trained medical professionals as any other Alabamian,” Tish Gotell Faulks, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said in a statement. Faulks then accused politicians of using children as “political pawns for their reelection campaigns.” Governor primaries start next month.
The Alabama legislation was initially cleared by state lawmakers on Thursday. At the time, Mark Del Monte, the CEO of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), remarked in a statement that the measure puts minors at “great risk of physical and mental harm.”
"Criminalizing evidence-based, medically necessary services is dangerous,” Del Monte underscored.
To date, over a dozen US states have either passed or introduced bills similar to Alabama’s Senate Bill 184, according to the UCLA School of Law. Aside from Alabama and Florida, measures have been taken up in Arizona, Mississippi and Utah, among other states.