Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is taking his attack on the state’s transgender residents to new heights, filing a lawsuit against a North Texas doctor for “blatantly violating Texas law by providing prohibited ‘gender transition’ treatments to nearly two dozen minors,” according to a press release today (Thursday, Oct. 17) from Paxton’s office.
Paxton is basing his hateful lawsuit on Senate Bill 14, which went into effect in September 2023 and was recently upheld by the GOP-ruled Texas Supreme Court. SB 14 prohibits gender transition healthcare, including “surgeries, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones for minors,” according to Paxton’s press release. SB 14 also requires the Texas Medical Board to “revoke the medical license or other authorization to practice medicine of a physician who violates” this law.
He claims that “growing scientific evidence strongly suggests” gender-affirming healthcare for children “in an attempt to anatomically or hormonally alter their biological sex characteristics have damaging, long-term consequences.” And, he claims, “the prohibited treatments are experimental, and no scientific evidence supports their supposed benefits.”
In reality though, science shows that gender-affirming care has huge benefits for transgender people, including trans minors. All established medical associations support gender-affirming healthcare. Also, no one is doing gender-transition surgeries on children — despite the demented claims of some Republicans — and the effects of puberty blockers usually prescribed for trans minors are temporary, ending when the individual stops taking the medications.
In fact, according to medical professionals and studies not aimed at promoting a right-wing political agenda and using trans people as tools to rile up right-wing voters and get them to the polls, gender-affirming healthcare saves lives. Legislation such as Texas’ SB 14 are, in fact, harmful to transgender youth, medical science says.
Paxton claims that his office has obtained “evidence” showing that a Dallas-area doctor has illegally provided “high-dose cross-sex hormones to 21 minor patients for the direct purpose of ‘transitioning’ the child’s biological sex. The doctor allegedly used false diagnoses and billing codes to mask these unlawful prescriptions.”
Paxton declared, “Texas passed a law to protect children from these dangerous unscientific medical interventions that have irreversible and damaging effects. Doctors who continue to provide these harmful ‘gender transition’ drugs and treatments will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Meanwhile, as Paxton wastes time and taxpayer dollars trying to interfere in individuals’ private, personal healthcare decisions, incidents of human sex trafficking continues to rise: There were 88 million child sexual abuse material files reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tip line in 2022, and Human trafficking is a $150 billion industry, the second most profitable illegal industry in the U.S.
In 2019, according to the National Library of Medicine, Texas had the second-highest reported cases of human trafficking, according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline. For the past several years, Texas has been one of the leading states in the number of reported human trafficking cases.
— Tammye Nash