The so-called "Vulnerable Child Protection Act" in Georgia, sponsored by six Republican representatives, attempts to amend the state’s health codes through a misuse of language that criminalizes gender-affirming care through its medicalization of transness.

The bill attempts to ban healthcare like puberty blockers and hormones, that can be lifesaving for trans youth, by making it a crime for gender-affirming doctors to provide such care with punishments that include revoking their licence and imprisonment that can range from one to 10 years.

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.’

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.

“Having the chance to stop those changes early was critical in allowing me to actually experience the rest of my life as a child and come into my adult life intact and on the right track towards a better future,” Elise Bader-Saye, a 22-year-old who received gender-affirming care at 16, said in the brief.

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.

GA HB 401 was first introduced on February 10 2021 and is currently active. If the act is to be approved by the governor, it would become law immediate effectively.