A federal appeals court has ruled that Alabama can begin enforcing a ban outlawing the use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat transgender children. The 11th U.S.
Alabama can begin immediately enforcing a ban outlawing the use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat transgender people under 19, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday, granting the state’s request to stay a preliminary injunction that had blocked enforcement of the 2022 law.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had previously ruled that the injunction should be vacated, but the decision had been effectively on hold while families with transgender children asked the full appellate court to reconsider the decision. The Thursday order will allow the ban to take effect while the full court decides whether it will revisit the decision.
Section 6. Except as provided for in Section 4, nothing in this act shall be construed as limiting or preventing psychologists, psychological technicians, and master's level licensed mental health professionals from rendering the services for which they are qualified by training or experience involving the application of recognized principles, methods, and procedures of the science and profession of psychology and counseling.
Section 7. Nothing in this section shall be construed to establish a new or separate standard of care for hospitals or physicians and their patients or otherwise modify, amend, or supersede any provision of the Alabama Medical Liability Act of 1987 or the Alabama Medical Liability Act of 1996, or any amendment or judicial interpretation of either act.
If affirming care means socially affirming as well as medical (drugs / surgery) then the law isn’t entirely against affirming care because it doesn’t mention anything against social affirmation and explicitly allows for psychologists to make appropriate decisions in that realm.
I’m not saying I’m for this law, but it is important to be precise about what the law is. It’s actually not a very long read.
Not the most absurd law ever. It just states that minors can’t undergo life altering surgeries or take medicine with potentially irreversible effects (that apparently isn’t even approved by the FDA?). It says nothing about what children can or can’t wear. Only thing that to me makes me raise an eyebrow is the whole “children can’t be encouraged to hide this dysphoria from their parents by teachers”.
I would also like to see the studies cited, but if they’re valid, then the law is for the most part reasonable
Except there are plenty of life altering surgeries cis teens routinely undergo, even cosmetic surgeries, and nobody seems particularly worried about them. Moreover, these laws usually carve out exemptions for cosmetic surgery on intersex infants’ genitals… I guess permanently altering a child’s genitals is fine as long as they can’t ask for it.
As for medication with “potentially irreversible effects,” that’s true of puberty too. Forcing a trans teen to undergo natal puberty is forcing them to acquire secondary sex characteristics that either take expensive treatments or surgery to reverse, or are irreversible. Puberty in general makes irreversible changes well before someone is 18. Being uncomfortable that trans teens exist and wanting to kick that can down the road until they’re legal adults doesn’t mean that’s actually what is developmentally or medically appropriate.
As for the FDA thing, it sounds like you’re referring to off label usage. Every drug has them. It doesn’t mean nobody knows what it does, puberty blocking drugs still block puberty whether you use them in a trans teen or a kid with precocious puberty.