Florida’s so-called “Vulnerable Child Protection Act”, proposed by Republican Representative Anthony Sabatani on Jan 11th 2022, echoes the fear-mongering of right-wing cisgender-hetersosexual systems that criminalize gender nonconforming and transgender people.

The bill aims to prevent trans youth from getting gender-affirming care by imposing criminal penalties on healthcare professionals who provide this lifesaving medical care.

It labels care as “misdemeanor” through a cisgender patriarchal gaze that medicalizes transness in an attempt reduce trans people to our bodies through a language of erasure: the bill’s text doesn’t mention the word “transgender” even once.

The bill’s archaic concept of a “vulnerable child” is used to suggest that children need to be ‘protected’ from ‘becoming’ transgender. The legislation’s hypocrisy is highlighted in how it protects harmful, nonconsensual surgeries on intersex youth, while simultaneously patronizing trans children by violating their right to autonomous self-determination.

Meanwhile, doctors will still be allowed to prescribe puberty blockers to cisgender children who go through puberty ‘too early’ or ‘too quickly.’

More than half of trans children were at risk of suicide this past year, and access to gender-affirming care is linked to being at lower risk of attempting suicide by nearly 40 percent in transgender and nonbinary youth, Trevor Project found.

Last week, 58 transgender adults including actor Elliot Page, director Lilly Wachowski and activist Major Griffin-Gracy filed an amicus brief, documenting how critically life-saving it is to have access to gender-affirming care.

“Just being able to live as myself has been one long period of euphoria. Being able to look in the mirror and being happy with the reflection I see has been magical. I no longer dislike the person looking back at me and that has made life worth living,” Attorney Jessie Lee Ann McGrath said in the brief.

Read more stories by trans folks on how gender-affirming care has been lifesaving: https://bit.ly/33K8DK9