Tennessee bans doctors from treating transgender youth with lifesaving healthcare

A doctor examines a child.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The governor of Tennessee has just signed the state’s fifth anti-LGBTQ bill this year alone, banning transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming health care.

Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed S.B. 126, which bans health care professionals from providing gender-affirming care to “gender dysphoric or gender incongruent prepubertal minors.”

Related: Tennessee Republican defends counting Black people as 3/5 of human beings

Tennessee is now the second state – after Arkansas – to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Arkansas’s law is more wide-reaching since it bans care for trans youth under the age of 18, whereas Tennessee’s only affects “prepubertal minors.”

“If lawmakers really care about the best interests of trans youth, they would focus on improving access to quality health care instead of playing doctor themselves,” said HRC President Alphonso David. “Patients, parents, and health care providers should be guided by science and medical best practices rather when seeking treatments, not the whims of the state legislators.”

This ban comes on the heels of Tennessee requiring businesses to…

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