Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana) have introduced legislation giving individuals up to 30 years to file suit against medical practitioners who prescribed cross-sex hormones or puberty blocking drugs, or performed gender-transition procedures on them before the age of 18.
The bill, known as the Protecting Minors from Medical Malpractice Act, also allows legal guardians to file on behalf of the patient.
The caveat—the bill only applies to surgeries performed after it becomes law.
“Unfortunately, radical doctors in the United States perform dangerous, experimental, and even sterilizing gender-transition procedures on young kids, who cannot even provide informed consent,” Cotton said. “Any doctor who performs these irresponsible procedures on kids should pay.”
Banks predicts that “ten years from now, there will be hundreds of thousands of Americans who were permanently scarred by the radical left’s agenda before they reached adulthood.”
The Protecting Minors from Medical Malpractice Act conflicts with a recent guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and a new executive order from President Joe Biden.
According to the Associated Press, WPATH provided them with an advanced copy of its new guidance ahead of publication in a medical journal later this year. In the updated rule, WPATH said hormone treatments could be started as early as 14—two years earlier than the group’s previous recommendation—and some surgeries can be done at age 15 or 17—a year or so earlier than previous guidance.
And earlier this month, Biden signed an executive order that “safeguard[s] LGBTQI+ youth from dangerous practices like so-called ‘conversion therapy.’”
But while Biden considers talk therapy “dangerous,” he recommends “irreversible and life-altering surgery for minors too young to apply for a learner’s permit,” Banks quipped.
Cotton and Bank’s bill has been endorsed by nearly a dozen groups including Family Policy Alliance, which “believe[s] that children should be protected from politicized medicine and should have the right to recover for the damages done to them.”
