Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene launches new bid to ban trans youth healthcare across the US
Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene discusses her new bill that makes gender-affirming care a felony offence. (Getty/Drew Angerer)
Republican and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene has launched a bid to criminalise trans youth healthcare.
The Georgia representative stood outside the US Capitol building on Tuesday (20 September) to announce the Protect Children’s Innocence bill, that would make it a felony to administer gender-affirming healthcare for youth.
“How on earth can this be happening in America? It’s hard to even understand,” she said during her address, referencing her constant false claims that medical practitioners are performing gender-affirming surgery on minors.
Guidelines generally state that only over-18s can consent to such surgeries.
The bill’s 37 supporters include your typical list of far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ Republicans, including disgraced Florida representative Matt Gaetz, who was accused of violating federal sex-trafficking laws by allegedly paying a 17-year-old girl to have sex (he denies the allegations), and Arizona lawmaker Paul Gosar, who spread a completely false rumour that the Uvalde Texas school shooter was a “leftist illegal alien.”
If passed, the legislation would place “restrictions on the provision of gender-affirming care”, according to its introduction.
“Additionally, the bill prohibits the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care or for health insurance that covers such care,” the bill continues. “Such care may not be provided in a federal health care facility or by a federal employee.”
(L-R) Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Ronny Jackson, Rep. Bob Good, and American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp attend a news conference on Capitol Hill. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“States like California, Washington, New York, and other Democrat-controlled states want to fast-track kids and tell parents they have no right to take away their children’s desire for gender-affirming care,” Greene falsely claimed. “There’s no such thing as gender-affirming care.”
Without a hint of irony, Virginia Republican and co-sponsor Bob Good seemed puzzled as to why there weren’t many Congress members at the press release to support the discriminatory legislation.
“Why wouldn’t every member of Congress be here?” he asked.
It’s unlikely the bill will attract the required votes to advance, even after the November midterm elections.
It comes after Joe Biden signed an executive order to safeguard LGBTQ+ healthcare from bills like this.
Greene clarified her views in an August broadcast of the Tucker Carlson Tonight Show where she likened gender-affirming care to “child abuse.”
More recently, she attacked the Department of Education during an Ohio Trump rally on Sunday (18 September) in a bizarre threat to “defund” those who “brainwash” American children.
During her segment, she said: “If the government wants to replace parents and brainwash children, you know what, we will just defund the Department of Education.”
She then called former president Donald Trump the “one true leader of the Republican party” while continually pushing the false claim that he won the 2020 election.
