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A bill to ban gender-affirming care for children passed in a Florida House subcommittee Wednesday. However, the bill could also attack unintended targets — including cancer patients.
House Bill 1421 would eliminate gender-affirming care for youth and restrict care for adults. It’s sponsored by Republican Representative Randy Fine. On Twitter, he called gender transitioning “evil” and referred to transgender activists as baby butchers.
“This is not care. This is an abomination. You have the chance today to make sure that this doesn’t happen in Florida.” Fine said Wednesday in front of the subcommittee.
The bill puts limits on what it calls “Gender Clinical Interventions.” But Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School, warns that may have effects far beyond the transgender community.
“The way it’s defined in the bill it could apply to a woman with breast cancer who needs to take hormones to treat the cancer, or someone who needs to get a mastectomy for breast cancer, or someone with prostate cancer who takes the same drug that’s used for puberty blockers.”
The bill also gives people 30 years to sue a doctor for malpractice if they are unhappy with gender clinical interventions.
“It would absolutely destroy basically most medical practice in the state of Florida and in their haste to attack trans people they don’t realize essentially the time bomb they’ve slipped into medical regulations here.”
The Healthcare Regulation subcommittee voted 12 to 5 to advance the bill.
The link between this Florida bill and its possible application to cancer patients was first reported by New Republic.
