Senate Bill 14, authored by Republican Sen. Donna Campbell from New Braunfels, will be heard Thursday, March 16, in the Senate State Affairs Committee.
SB 14 would prohibit the state’s child healthcare plan from covering procedures or medications “intended to transition a child’s biological sex as determined by the child’s sex organs, chromosomes and endogenous profiles.”
Procedures and medications prohibited by the bill include “perform[ing] a surgery that sterilizes the child,” including castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty or vaginoplasty. It also prohibits physicians from performing a mastectomy on a minor or providing, prescribing, administering or dispensing any prescription drugs that “induce transient or permanent infertility,” as well as “puberty suppression or blocking prescription drugs to stop or delay normal puberty,” “supraphysiologic doses of testosterone to females” or “supraphysiologic doses of estrogen to males,” and from removing “any otherwise healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue.”
Anti- transgender activists — such as Texas Values Action — are martialing their supporters to attend the hearing and to speak and lobby their legislators in favor of this proposed new law which would take decisions regarding the healthcare of Texas children out of the hands of their parents and healthcare professionals and give it instead to lawmakers in Austin and right-wing militants.
You can keep track of which bills have been assigned to which committees in the Texas House and the Texas Senate, what exactly proposed legislation says, when bills come up for a hearing and if and when they are voted out of committee at the Texas Legislature Online website for the 88th Texas Legislature’s regular session.
— Tammye Nash