Chapel Hill, NC – The North Carolina GOP filed several bills related to transgender bans. The bills filed would keep transgender youth from receiving medical procedures and stop them from participating in sports activities consistent with their gender identity.
- Senate Bill 560 (Medical Treatment for Minors Act) would keep health providers from performing gender affirming procedures for minors in most situations.
- Senate Bill 639 (Youth Health Protection Act) would ban health care providers from prescribing puberty blockers to transgender youth.
- Senate Bill 641 (Medical Ethics Defense Act) would allow health care professionals, institutions, and payers to not administer or pay for any service which goes against their conscience.
- Senate Bill 631/House Bill 574 (Fairness in Women’s Sports Act) would stop transgender athletes from playing sports consistent with their gender identity.
- Senate Bill 636 (School Athletic Transparency) focuses on several facets of high school athletics and includes that participation in sports should be based solely on a student’s reproductive biology at birth.
Lucy Henthorn, a transgender first-year at UNC, says that denying medical treatment to transgender youth could lead to adverse consequences. “HRT did save my life…Being forced to go through a puberty that doesn’t align with your gender identity is genuinely psychologically detrimental, and it truly is just hell to live through,” Henthorn says.
Senator Kevin Corbin, a sponsor of Bill 631, says the bill is reasonable. “I think this is a commonsense bill. Over 70% of North Carolinians agree that biological male should not participate in female sports.”
Corbin also argues that each of the bills has nothing to do with any of the other. But Rob Schofield, the Director of Research at NC Policy Watch, disagrees.
“People are always fearful of change, and things that are different that are unfamiliar with. So, they decided to sort of create this bogeyman and lift it up and make it the target. And so I think it it’s clearly a concerted effort across the board,” Schofield says.
So far none of the bills have made it out from the Senate or House Floors, but it is possible, since Republicans now have a veto-proof supermajority.