The Missouri legislature has introduced many bills this session affecting a small group of people: Transgender children. The bills range from limiting gender-affirming care to making kids play on the sports teams that align with their sex at birth. In fact, Missouri has filed more anti-LGBTQ bills this session than any other state, with at least 27.
Many trans people and their supporters — parents, friends, religious leaders — have taken to Jefferson City over the past few weeks to speak out against the proposed legislation. Susan Halla, president of TransParent USA, joined KMOX to talk about the effects of these bills. She also pointed out that it isn’t legislators themselves who are writing these bills.
“These bills are coming out of right wing think tanks and being disseminated to all the legislatures across the nation,” Halla said. “If you look at the bills that are introduced in Florida, introduced in Texas, introduced in South Dakota, they're all the exact same bill. The language really hasn’t even changed and half of our legislators haven't even read them before they propose them.”
It’s not just the state legislature, either. U.S. Senator Josh Hawley proposed a bill that calls gender affirming care “child abuse” and wants people to be able to sue over it. He alleges that people are being forced into gender affirming care, including hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgeries. Halla says those allegations are “completely untrue” and a right-wing talking point.
“I am the parent of a transgender child. He's now 22 And absolutely thriving after the treatment that he received here in St. Louis,” Halla said. “It's taken all of our children a long time for their medical care, nothing like they're saying in the media, this is nothing forced. This is nothing that's happening at any breakneck speed. And all of our children are thriving because of the care they're receiving.”
A report came out recently saying that the Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital was partaking in unsafe practices, like pressuring kids into taking hormones or getting gender reassignment surgery. Halla said that of the other parents she’s talked to since the allegations came out, no one has recounted a similar experience.
“The misinformation is that this isn't appropriate care, that this is child abuse. It is not. There is no one getting surgery under the age of 18 at Children's Hospital for transgender issues,” Halla said. “That is one large issue that keeps coming up time and time again — it is not happening, period. Children that are younger than 15, 16 are not receiving any sort of hormonal care outside of puberty blockers and those are safe and effective and used in other childhood diseases.”
She said that meeting with the center allows families to get together with doctors to get information for their children so that when they become old enough, they can start making those decisions.
Halla added that the debate around the transgender community has been “incredibly distressing” on trans kids. She said she and other parents have to toe the line between protecting their kids and letting them share their stories.
“We're really trying to rein back any of our younger children from testifying, even though they really want to,” she said. “They want to tell lawmakers, they want to meet lawmakers and say, ‘Hi, this is who I am. And I'm just a regular kid.’ And they are, they're just regular kids.”
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