AUSTIN, Texas (LifeSiteNews) — The Texas Supreme Court allowed the state’s ban on transgender hormones and surgeries for minors to take effect, making Texas the largest state in the U.S. to outlaw the dangerous interventions.
The court on Thursday rejected an emergency motion filed by LGBT activist groups to stop the law from going into effect as scheduled on September 1.
Democratic Texas District Judge Maria Cantú Hexsel temporarily blocked the law last week, but the attorney general’s office immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, automatically pausing her injunction. The appeal is pending before the Supreme Court.
“Texas kids are safer today because of the Supreme Court ruling,” said Jonathan Covey, director of policy for conservative advocacy group Texas Values. “Protecting children from harmful and dangerous gender transition surgeries and puberty blockers is in the best interests of the child and something we all agree on.”
Texas’s ban on child “gender transitions,” which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed in June, outlaws prescribing, administering, or dispensing to minors under 18 “prescription drugs that induce transient or permanent infertility,” including puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones. It also prohibits sterilizing surgeries and mastectomies for minors and the use of public funds to pay for underage “transitions.”
The law requires children who began taking puberty blockers or hormones before June 1 to wean off the drugs “over a period of time and in a manner that is safe and medically appropriate and that minimizes the risk of complications.”
The Texas Medical Board must revoke the license of any physician who violates the law.
Abbott previously issued an executive order directing Texas agencies to consider “gender transition” procedures as child abuse.
Research shows that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones lead to serious, even life-threatening, side effects, such as cardiovascular disease, infertility, bone density loss, and emotional problems. A 2019 study found that people who use hormones as part of a “gender transition” have dramatically higher risks of breast cancer.
READ: Transgender hormones linked to ‘substantially’ higher risk of heart attack, stroke: study
Transgender surgeries include irreversible procedures to remove sexual organs and construct synthetic genitalia and other features meant to imitate those of the opposite sex.
Despite massive risks and no scientific basis, tens of thousands of minors in the U.S. have taken puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones in recent years for the purpose of “gender transitioning.” At least 3,678 underwent some form of transgender surgery between 2016 and 2020, a study released last month reported.
Nearly 30,000 teenagers in Texas between 13 and 17 years old identify as “transgender,” according to estimates from the Williams Institute at UCLA.
In addition to Texas, 21 other states have passed laws restricting “gender transitions” for children, and most of those laws are currently in effect.
State and federal courts have recently upheld bans on transgender surgeries and drugs for minors in several states, including Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee.
LifeSiteNews has published a regularly updated map of state laws protecting children from “gender transitions,” which can be viewed here.
Other Texas laws set to take effect on Friday include a ban on males competing in women’s college sports and a law prohibiting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and programs in higher education institutions.
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