ATLANTA — Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is pushing a bill to do away with procedures and services designed to alter the gender of a minor. 

According to her proposed bill, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, gender-affirming care includes performing surgery, administering medication or performing other procedures to change the body of an individual to correspond to a sex that differs from the individual’s biological sex. 

“The real problem is not only is it happening to kids and they are thinking they’re doing the right thing, many of them are realizing years later when they get a little bit older, that they have made a tragic mistake,” Taylor Greene said at a Sept. 20 press conference. “And the damage is undoable. It’s permanent … double mastectomy, hysterectomy, castration, what testosterone does to a young woman’s body, what puberty blockers do to a young boy growing as he’s going through puberty. All of these changes are prominent and they cannot be undone.” 

While surgical interventions aren’t reversible, puberty blockers are and hormone therapy is partially reversible, according to medical professionals. 

Taylor Greene said the bill is not an attack on anyone’s sexuality, but instead reserves the decision for adulthood. 

During her press conference, Chloe Cole, an activist against gender affirming care, referenced her personal experience with the intervention.  

She was born a girl, but at age 12, she recalled telling her parents that she identified as a boy. 

“They were scared and desperate for answers. They wanted what every parent wants for their child … for me to be OK and thrive,” Cole said. “At 13 years old, on the advice of so-called medical professionals, I was put on puberty-blocking medication. And only a month later, I was given my first testosterone injection. The gender clinic presented my parents with the classic false dichotomy regarding children with gender dysphoria. Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son? Given these options, what loving parent wouldn’t choose to transition their child?”

Several studies and reports such as a study published in the National Library of Medicine found that gender-affirming medical interventions were associated with lower odds of depression and suicide over 12 months.

In a cohort study of 104 people between ages 13-20, those who initiated puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones had a 73% lower odds of suicidality versus youth who didn’t have gender-affirming treatments.

At age 15, Cole said she received a double mastectomy, a surgical procedure that removes both breasts. 

“At 16 I finally realized what happened to me and that I had made a huge mistake,” she said. “I realized the beauty of motherhood was stolen from me by medical professionals who my family entrusted me to. I realized after maturing a bit more that a child does not, in fact, know who they are at 12 years old. I realized that I wanted to be what I always was, forever will be a woman.”

Cole, now 18, described herself as a “tomboy” who never fit social norms. Exposed to LGBTQ content online and on social media at age 12, at the time she thought that becoming part of that community would make her “a celebrated and valued member of the most talked about community on Earth.”

The CDC’s recent Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System and Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) estimates about 300,000 teens, or 1.4% of the U.S. population, ages 13-17 who identify as transgender in the U.S. Those teens would be at risk of losing access to gender affirming care if the Protect Children’s Innocence Act receives approval in Congress. 

The bill, if passed, would:

• Make it a felony to perform gender affirming care on a minor and permit a minor on whom such care is performed to bring a civil action against each individual who provided the care.

• Prohibit the use of federal funds for gender affirming care or for health insurance that covers such care. The services can’t be provided in a federal health care facility or by a federal employee.

• Prohibits qualified health plans from including coverage for gender affirming care; Plans that include coverage for such care are not eligible for federal subsidies.

• Prohibit colleges and universities from offering instruction in gender affirming care.

• Make any non-U.S. national (alien under federal law) who performs gender affirming care on a minor deportable and inadmissible to the United States.

Several states have already enacted laws against gender-affirming procedures, as more than 15 states introduced such legislation this year. 

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the state’s bill this month that would punish parents and physicians involved in prescribing hormone-altering medications or puberty blockers, and performing gender-altering surgeries on people younger than 19 years old of up to 10 years in prison; however, U.S. District Judge Liles Burke issued a preliminary injunction to allow the medication component to continue while a court challenge is under way. 

He suggested that the state’s law is likely unconstitutional, stating that the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit have made clear that: “parents have a fundamental right to direct the medical care of their children subject to accepted medical standards; and discrimination based on gender-nonconformity equates to sex discrimination.” 

“I know that I am a girl and I always have been,” said a 15-year-old transgender girl identified as ‘H.W.’ in a lawsuit challenging the Alabama law. “Even before I learned the word ‘transgender’ or met other trans people, I knew myself. I did not choose to experience bullying and discrimination because I am transgender. I chose to be proud of who I am. The possibility of losing access to my medical care because of this law causes me deep anxiety. I would not feel like myself anymore if this life-saving medication was criminalized.”

The Arkansas legislature passed a similar bill last year — although a federal court blocked the law from going into effect pending a lawsuit. A proposal to ban transgender services in Georgia and other states failed to advance this year.