Transgender rights in the spotlight as Arkansas and Tennessee become latest states to pass anti-trans legislation

Over 60 anti-trans bills are being considered across the country, according to the ACLU. LGBTQ advocates, including Strangio, are concerned that the proposed laws will make it easier to limit trans people’s access to health care.

“There have been many existential threats to trans existence, but there’s something uniquely dangerous about what’s going on right at this moment with the combination of the sports bills and the health care bills,” Strangio told CNN. “I think the impulse underlying both is to try to establish governmental policy that it’s harmful to be trans.”

Last year, Idaho passed a bill banning trans participation in sports — but the law was blocked by a federal judge over the summer.

This year, however, other states have introduced similar legislation more successfully.

“This important piece of legislation will ensure that young girls in Mississippi have a fair, level playing field in public schools,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said during the signing event.

The bill states that “a student’s gender for purposes of participation in a public middle school or high school interscholastic athletic activity or event be determined by the student’s sex at the time of the student’s birth, as indicated on the student’s original birth certificate.”

Students must show proof of their sex at the time of birth if their birth certificate does not appear to be the original or does not indicate the student’s sex at the time of birth. This does not apply to students in kindergarten through 4th grade, the Tennessee bill says.

Also last week, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” which bans trans girls and women from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity.

The law requires a person’s gender identity to match their assigned sex at birth. It applies to all sports sponsored by public schools beginning from the elementary level and up through college. Private schools will be held to the same standard if they compete against a public school.

Advocates warn trans health care could also be at risk

Though only legislation around sports bans have been codified into law so far, trans advocates warn that legislation targeting access to health care is approaching passage in some states.

On Monday, the Arkansas Senate will vote on the Arkansas Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, a measure that would prevent trans people under age 18 from undergoing gender-affirmative treatment. The bill would also allow private insurance companies to refuse coverage to trans people.

For young people experiencing gender dysphoria — a diagnosis that includes identifying as a gender different than your sex assigned at birth for at least six months — this would mean not being able to access puberty-blockers, a treatment option for transgender youth that is used to prevent the onset of puberty.

The Arkansas SAFE Act would also ban cross-hormone therapy, a gender-affirming treatment that allows for trans people to masculinize or feminize their physical appearance to be more consistent with their gender identity.

Arkansas State Rep. Robin Lundstrum, who proposed the Arkansas SAFE ACT, has positioned the bill as protective for young people.

Some groups, like the Family Policy Alliance and Heritage Foundation, said they back measures like the Arkansas SAFE Act and other similar proposals.

“The psychological aspect of the treatment of gender dysphoria needs to be thoroughly investigated and debated,” Emilie Kao, director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, told CNN, citing a 2011 Swedish study.

“Because the most authoritative studies of those people with gender dysphoria who have gone through surgical intervention show that there is an increase in the level of suicidal ideation after going through surgeries.”

But other groups, like the American Psychiatric Association and The American Academy of Pediatrics, have come out against the healthcare bans.

The proposed bills contradict medical guidelines from several associations, including the Endocrine Society, which recommends that doctors offer transgender teens puberty blockers.

Trans advocates and experts argue that these bills do anything but protect young trans people.

“Affirming health care can literally be life or death for anyone, but particularly for trans youth,” Raquel Willis, a Black trans activist and writer, told CNN. “People think that’s an exaggeration. It’s not. People think you can just discipline identity out of someone and that is not true and in many ways is torture.”

Dr. Jack Turban, a fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, told CNN that “all existing studies show that regret following gender-affirming medical care is rare.”

Turban, who researches the mental health of transgender youth, said that no surgical intervention is being done on children.

He said the psychological effects of gender dysphoria can be harmful to young trans peoples’ bodies.

“We have seen patients with rib fractures from being so dysphoric towards their developing chests that they tightly bind their chests with tape or ace bandages, adolescents who required surgery because their intestines were damaged from not going to the bathroom due to genital dysphoria, and countless patients who had mental health crises related to pubertal progression,” Turban said.

“Our recent study in the journal Pediatrics found that those who access pubertal suppression during adolescence have lower odds of considering suicide than those who aren’t able to access this intervention. In contrast, our research shows that attempts to force transgender people to be cisgender result in greater odds of suicide attempts.”