After a record-breaking wave of anti-trans legislation in 2021, Republican Senator for Arizona Wendy Rogers, is already attacking trans and gender-nonconforming youth by proposing bills prohibiting their access to healthcare and policing their right to participate in sports.

If passed as a law, Senate Bill 1045 would ban gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth in Arizona, and would convict healthcare professionals who provide it as Class 4 felony offenders, with a prison sentence of one to three years, Washington Blade reports.

It would also require school staff to out children to their parents, potentially putting tgnc youth at further risk of being discriminated against at home.

“It is deadly because if (children) don’t have the foundational information, if they have nobody they can turn and oftentimes is the only one they can turn to is the professional at school before, (the legislature) is laying the foundation for students suicides,” Phoenix Pride board member Ryan Starzyk told Mirror.

Access to gender-affirming care is linked to being at lower risk of attempting suicide by nearly 40 percent, according to Trevor Project.

Rogers’ second proposed bill, Senate Bill 1046, aims to police sports through gender essentialist invasive procedures based on a child’s anatomy and gender assigned at birth.

These attacks on trans youth’s right to be who they are has extreme mental health consequences: “Transgender adolescents are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts as the general population, and they are up to four times as likely to engage in substance use. Depression and school-based victimization factored heavily into the disparities in both cases,” researchers at The University of Texas at Austin found.

Arizona Interscholastic Association’s policy for state sports suggests children have the right to participate in activities in ways that are consistent and affirmative to their gender identity.

"Transgender youth deserve to be safe and supported at school…These results show that reducing depression and victimization for transgender students should significantly reduce their suicide-related risk,” said Stephen Russell, from UT Austin.

[If you or someone you know is thinking of suicide, call National Suicide Prevention Lifeline:1-800-273-8255; text TALK to 741741. India http://www.aasra.info/helpline.html]