"Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz (R) says his Republican majority intends to permanently ban gender-affirming care for minors this year. The move comes more than seven months after the release of a Utah Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) report, mandated by a Republican-backed state law, which found that medical evidence actually supports access to gender-affirming healthcare for minors, a different result than many conservatives were hoping for."
"Utah already has what former state Rep. Mike Kennedy (R) - who now represents the state's third district in Congress - described to Deseret News as a "permanent" ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Passed in January 2023, S.B. 16 banned gender-affirming surgeries for minors - despite such surgeries being exceptionally rare - and instituted an indefinite moratorium on providing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to minors for the purposes of gender-affirming care."
Utah Republican leaders plan to pursue a permanent ban on gender-affirming care for minors this year. A DHHS-mandated review conducted by the University of Utah's Drug Regimen Center found medical evidence supporting access to gender-affirming healthcare for minors. Utah passed S.B. 16 in January 2023, banning gender-affirming surgeries for minors and imposing an indefinite moratorium on puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for gender-affirming purposes. A co-sponsor of S.B. 16 acknowledged that labeling the HRT and puberty blocker prohibition a "moratorium" was a tactic to secure legislative support, and the ban remains effectively permanent unless lawmakers reverse it.
Read at LGBTQ Nation
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]