The House of Representatives is expected to vote on legislation that would criminalize transgrander health care as soon as Wednesday.
The Protect Children’s Innocence Act, introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., would make it a federal felony for doctors to provide certain forms of medical care related to gender transition for minors, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The bill could also expose parents and guardians to potential criminal liability for facilitating that care.
Greene, who will resign from her seat early next year, said she flipped her vote on the annual National Defense Authorization Act in exchange for a promise from House leadership that her bill would receive a vote.
When Greene introduced the bill in May, she described the care it targets in incendiary terms, saying the measure would “stop the mutilation of kids” and hold those involved in what she called “barbaric procedures” accountable.
“Leader Steve Scalise has promised me that my bill Protect Children’s Innocence Act, H.R. 3492, will be brought to the floor for a vote next Wednesday, Dec 17th,” she wrote on X last week. “This would make it a class c felony to trans a child under 18. Every Republican campaigned to protect kids from the trans agenda.”
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Civil rights groups have condemned the bill as an unprecedented and extreme measure.
“This extreme bill puts the threat of prosecution between hundreds of thousands of families and their doctors and would put doctors behind bars for exercising their best medical judgment,” ACLU’s Mike Zamore said in a statement. “Passing this bill would be a grave escalation of an already severe effort to not only push transgender people out of public life but also allow the state to control our bodies and our lives further.”
“[A]nti-equality members of the House may consider a bill to put doctors in prison just for doing their jobs,” Kelley Robinson, president of Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “That could mean a pediatrician facing jail time for providing the care they were trained to provide. It could mean a parent being handcuffed and tossed into a police car because they went to the pharmacy and administered their child’s medication as prescribed.”
