Arkansas Moves to Protect Children from Gender Transition Procedures

March 25, 2021

The Arkansas Senate is currently considering HB 1570, the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act. This bill aims to protect children from invasive and untested procedures associated with “gender transition,” as these types of procedures pose serious health risks and cannot be fully reversed. Such drugs and procedures are based on the unscientific theory that some individuals can be born in the “wrong” body. Eighteen states have introduced similar legislation so far in 2021.

The Arkansas SAFE Act prohibits health care professionals from performing gender reassignment surgeries or providing puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones for the purpose of gender transition to individuals under the age of 18. Health care professionals found to be in violation of this policy would have their medical licenses revoked. The bill also prohibits medical insurance from covering such treatments for minors. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Robin Lundstrum of Arkansas’ 87th district (Benton and Washington counties) and recently passed the House floor with a vote of 70-22. It is currently awaiting action in the Senate. 

The liberal news media has decried this legislation’s so-called “assault” on transgender rights.  Back in January 2020, when only six states had introduced such legislation, CNN quoted Ryan Thoreson, a Yale law school lecturer and LGBT rights researcher, as saying, “There are alarming signals that this could pass in conservative states.” Thoreson also referred to these bills as part of a series of “attacks on transgender youths” by lawmakers and said that the proposed laws would restrict young people’s access to “basic health care.” The CNN article also insisted that bills like these could “prove devastating to transgender children” and suggested that children who cannot obtain such procedures are more likely to commit suicide.

You don’t have to be a physician to know that describing gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy as “basic health care” is ludicrous. In what other instance would the suppression of natural bodily development and removal of healthy or non-diseased body parts from children (or anyone for, that matter) be considered permissible, let alone essential health care? 

Transgender activists typically argue that securing access to gender transition procedures is really about the child’s mental health, theorizing that these procedures are the only thing that will cure their gender dysphoria and reduce their distress. This idea might be more compelling if it had any scientific evidence to back it up. We currently have no good evidence that these procedures even accomplish their stated purpose—improving children’s mental health. FRC argues that such evidence would be “absolutely necessary to justify such radical and unnatural physical intervention.”

This lack of evidence, combined with the fact that most children with gender dysphoria will outgrow their condition and not identify as transgender adults, makes the legality of performing gender transition procedures on children and activists’ advocacy for said procedures even more troubling. For most kids with gender incongruity, puberty is the cure, not the disease.

The number of proposed bills aimed at protecting minors from the harmful effects of gender transition procedures has seen a sharp rise in the past two years. This trend, combined with conservative wins in state legislatures in the most recent election, is cause for optimism. Hopefully, states will be able to pass common-sense legislation that protects children from such harmful practices, nurturing them rather than sacrificing their health and well-being on the altar of unscientific transgender ideology. 

Based on its recent success, the Arkansas SAFE Act could very well be the first bill of its kind to pass a state legislature, but it needs your help! If you (or your family and friends) live in Arkansas, please speak up now and ask your elected officials to protect minors from the growing pressure to treat puberty like a disease.