Four Senate and House Republicans in Idaho are attempting to ban lifesaving healthcare for transgender youth through a bill that would extend the state’s existing state ban on genital mutilation, using language that conflates gender-affirming care with medicalized violence.

The cost of parents loving their trans child, and doctors offering lifesaving care would be imprisonment that could extend up to a lifetime under this bill, which would make it a felony for adults and healthcare providers to support a trans child’s right to access care that would help them live as their full self.

The devastating impacts of this bill don’t stop at criminalizing care: this legislation would also make it a felony for adults to protect their children by moving to a different state.

Trans youth know who they are, and bills like these are putting lives at risk: 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.

While the bill prohibits lifesaving healthcare for trans youth, it simultaneously protects harmful, nonconsensual surgeries on intersex minors, and follows another common theme of erasure and misgendering in these legislative attacks: it doesn’t use the words “transgender” and “intersex” even once.

Regardless of the future of this bill, its harm would be experienced far beyond the courts – 85 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth said in a poll, that their mental health was negatively impacted by last year’s record-breaking legislative attacks on their identities.

Read testimonies by trans youth who will be directly impacted by this bill: https://bit.ly/3MT3wJ0

Trans folks have repeatedly emphasized how critically lifesaving gender-affirming care is – read their stories here: https://bit.ly/33K8DK9

ID HB 675 was introduced on Feb 23rd, passed the house, and was referred to State Affairs on March 9th, 2022.