WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. House of Representatives voted 216-211 Wednesday to criminalize performing gender transition procedures on minors, although its prospects of making it through the Senate are doubtful.
Introduced by outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the Protect Children’s Innocence Act would impose fines and/or up to 10 years in prison on anyone who “knowingly performs, or attempts to perform, genital or bodily mutilation on another person who is a minor”; “knowingly chemically castrates a minor”; or knowingly “facilitates or consents to female genital mutilation of a minor” or “transports a minor for the purpose of the performance of female genital mutilation on such minor.” The bill includes exceptions for procedures that are meant to address actual medical issues, rather than purposes relating to gender confusion.
The bill passed with three Democrats crossing over to support it: Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, and Don Davis of North Carolina. At the same time, four Republicans broke ranks to vote against it: Mike Lawler of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Gabe Evans of Colorado, and Mike Kennedy of Utah.
Fox News reports that prior to passage, Greene came into conflict with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) over whether certain details passed constitutional muster.
Roy, a member of the House Rules Committee, supports banning youth gender transitions but proposed an amendment that would have limited criminal liability to conduct that “falls within federal jurisdiction.” Greene claimed he “refuses to protect children”; Roy countered that “the constitution matters & we should not bastardize it to use ‘interstate commerce’ to empower federal authorities.” He ultimately backed down.
To reach President Donald Trump’s desk, the bill would require 60 votes, meaning zero Republican defections and seven Democrats crossing the aisle. This fall, Trump has started demanding that Senate Republicans eliminate the filibuster so they can pass a wider range of legislation with their 53-seate majority, but so far GOP leaders have resisted, fearful of the transformative policies Democrats could push through as a result the next time they regain power.
A large body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically-transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored detransitioners, individuals who attempted transitioning before regretting it and returning to life as their true sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that “transitioning” is the best solution.
“Gender-affirming” physicians have also been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with an 2022 exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”
