Child abuse is legally mandated in Arkansas; states are lining up to follow suit
Withholding medical treatment from children is child abuse. Withholding lifesaving medical treatment from children is negligent homicide. And yet today, the legislature of Arkansas overrode the REPUBLICAN governor’s veto to ban gender affirming healthcare for trans youth. The abuse of trans children is now the law in Arkansas, and make no mistake — this law will result in deaths.
So careless and callous are the legislators who did this that a young person currently undergoing treatment cannot continue it. When their prescription runs out, too bad. Taking puberty blockers? Tough luck — you’re going through puberty, irreversibly. And the interventions needed to transition after puberty require, in addition to many of the same medical treatments, surgical treatments to remedy the secondary sex characteristics puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy are meant to suppress.
Transgender Americans are MORE THAN 67x AS LIKELY TO ATTEMPT SUICIDE in their lifetime. That is not a typo. Transgender Americans are sixty-seven times more likely to attempt suicide than the average American.
7.3% attempt suicide in any given year. Those who seek gender-affirming treatment and are denied it are 2x as likely to attempt suicide as those who seek gender-affirming treatment and receive it.
Being the victim of discrimination, which is all this law is, increases suicidal thoughts and attempts among transgender Americans. This is on top of the societal forces that lead this population to experience massively greater rates of family estrangement, homelessness, poverty, substance abuse, depression, crime victimization, and domestic violence. The trans youth this law targets are even more likely than trans adults to suffer the consequences of society’s discrimination and the banal cruelty of prejudiced individuals from parents and teachers to peers and strangers.
In the years that it takes courts to undo this travesty or in the months, if we’re lucky, it takes the Senate to dither over the filibuster and pass the Equality Act, people seeking healthcare will descend into hopelessness and die because doing even more to make that person’s life harder was good politics for some bunko salesman playing legislator as a 60-day-a-year hobby.
Meanwhile, other states are on track to follow Arkansas’s shameful example. While sports-related laws seem to attract more attention, laws targeting gender affirming healthcare are not receiving the attention due them. Whereas Arkansas made it a civil offense for doctors to provide gender affirming care to youth, legislators in Alabama passed a bill making it a felony for doctors to provide such care.
North Carolina, which apparently did not learn its lesson from the backlash to the anti-trans bathroom bill its legislature passed in 2016, goes further than other states, which are focused on banning gender affirming treatment for minors. Some lawmakers there want to extend the ban all the way to age 21. It’s not enough for these ghouls to mandate child abuse. They want to torment adults, too.
In Texas, the Senate passed, on a purely partisan vote, a bill that redefine the legal definition of child abuse to include gender affirming care. It’s downright Orwellian: withholding necessary, lifesaving medical care isn’t child abuse, these legislators say; providing it is. It’s war is peace, and the war is being waged on the most vulnerable — already marginalized, stigmatized children. And not just children, but their parents and doctors. Under this proposed law, which is in committee in the Texas house, children will be removed from their parents if their parents facilitate medically necessary care for their children. This, from the pro-family party.
A number of states, Alabama included, are debating bills that would require educators and healthcare providers to inform parents if their child is exhibiting signs of gender non-conformity. In other words, if Jason plays with dolls during morning kindergarten, the teacher would be required to inform the parent. It is as subjective as it is cruel, stupid, and an absurd hijacking of classrooms to create a surveillance state to identify anyone who happens to be different in even inconsequential ways.
As for the sports bans, the one recently debated in Florida, and rejected by the Senate after passing the lower house, would have required a doctor to inspect the genitals of any student-athlete whose gender was challenged. Other states are examining similar bills. This is legally mandated sexual assault, at the whim of whomever — coach, unhined parent, teenagers who think it would be funny — would decide to challenge someone’s gender identity.
There is an impulse to be glib in the face of laws and bills and legislators that have dismissed children, patients, parents, doctors, medical associations, educators, and coaches. These lawmakers are making fools of themselves, except they aren’t fools. They may be ignorant. They may be deliberately ignorant, but let’s not mistake them for being foolish. When someone doesn’t know something, they can always try to learn. These legislators, with the testimony of experts and constituents at their disposal, don’t want to learn. They don’t want to understand. They don’t like people who want to help them understand. They don’t like cis allies. They don’t like trans people.
Parents are preparing to flee these states. Businesses are worried about their ability to attract employees. And these legislators do not care. Those are not bugs. They are features of these bills. These legislators do not want trans people to exist. Many deny that they exist at all, and since they can’t legislate existence, though some are trying, they are deliberately driving people out of their homes. They no doubt don’t want anyone sympathetic to trans people moving to the state either, so they don’t care if businesses can’t attract new employees as easily. The cruelty is the point, as it has been for the party perpetuating these bills for more than five years now.
What’s to be done? It is insufficient for the business community to merely object to these bills and laws. Retroactive objections to laws already passed, at least when not coupled to a commitment to action if those bills proceed or those laws are not repealed, are useless. They are an exercise in public relations. I believe they are well intentioned, but in the absence of a threat of consequences, they are mere statements whose primary result is to restate a company’s commitment to gender diversity, equity, and inclusion. Those simply do not rise to the challenge of the moment: putting a stop to child abuse and sexual assault, protecting families, and saving lives.
Instead, companies must issue threats to withdraw their business from the states that pass such laws, as the NCAA did in Florida. They must threaten to withhold services being provided to these state governments. They must withhold political donations to the legislators pushing for or who have voted for these bills and the party to which they belong at the state and federal levels. They must be willing to make good on these threats, and swiftly.
Why is it the responsibility of large companies to do this? Noblesse oblige. To whom much is granted, much is expected. From those who live a privileged life, a duty to use that privilege to benefit others not so fortunate.
It’s a quaint, pre-20th century notion that needs dusting off. The price of doing nothing is so much worse than difficulty retaining and recruiting workers. It’s another generation of trans youth lost to depression, substance abuse, homelessness, violence, and suicide. If companies want to commit to trans-inclusive DE&I, there is nothing more consequential than these bills and laws. Seminars and hiring policies are good — even necessary — but corporate America must stop thinking about it what it can do and start thinking about what it will stop doing: providing these state governments and their titular leader with the financial benefits of their patronage and even presence.
As for these legislators and the governors who have signed or would sign these bills, everlasting shame and ignominy.
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The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not represent those of his employer.
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicide-datasheet-a.pdf
