AUSTIN (KXAN) — A bill filed Wednesday in Texas’ House of Representatives would ban medical providers from prescribing certain medications and from performing some medical procedures if they “know” their patient is transgender.
House Bill (HB) 3399 appears to build off 2023’s Senate Bill 14, a ban on transition-related medical care and medications for minors. The new bill would simply replace “child” in the specific state law with “person,” expanding the existing ban to adults.
Rep. Brent Money, R-Greenville, authored the bill; he has not responded to KXAN’s request for comment.
The bill can be read below; the article continues after it.
‘Part of the plan,’ pass or fail
The bill has long odds to pass this session.
It’s the 3,399th bill out of 3,503 others in the House, with 1,793 more filed in the Senate as of Friday. During the previous session, the Texas House only passed 1,578 items. Time also limits the bill’s chances, as both chambers can only pass legislation until the session adjourns on June 2.
However, independent news organization TransLash Media Founder Imara Jones warned that the bill could be an indicator of things to come and shows that anti-trans activists never intended to stop with restrictions on transgender children.
“They’ve had that plan since 2018, where kids were the easiest way to enter into the conversation around anti-trans politics and policies, but the goal always was adults,” she said. “I don’t think that it’s an evolution…it is a part of the larger effort. I think that they’ve had tremendous success with targeting trans kids, and have seen that go better than they thought. So, of course, they would move on to trans adults.”
Jones has spent years tracking the spread of anti-trans policies in the U.S. She’s documented that research in annual seasons of her podcast “The Anti-Trans Hate Machine,” exploring the wealthy elites, organizations and politicians behind the movement.
Texas’ bills can be seen as forecasting for anti-trans legislation in other states and federally, Jones explained, calling the state “an important sort of playground.”
“Florida and Texas are about how to use the mainstream levers of politics to advance anti-trans legislation. And so a lot of times, what you see in Texas is a test run for what you’re going to see elsewhere,” she said. “The governor is surrounded and has connections with a lot of radical Christian politics and politicians in Texas, Dominionism and Christian nationalism. Gov. Abbott has embraced those politics and policies as a result of that affiliation.”
Dominionism, or Dominion Theology, is a branch of Christianity that seeks to rule over the U.S. and implement laws based on their preferred version of the Bible.
“The combination of what we’re seeing at the state level and the incredible effort at the federal level to erase trans people from public life, I don’t see that it has any end anytime soon,” Jones said. “The only other countervailing force politically…is the Democratic Party. And right now, Democrats are really falling short of their stated values in the protection of trans people and just struggling with how to talk about this subject overall.”
Texas ‘not for freedom’
The bill has already caused distress and harm to transgender Texans, for whom it is an existential threat. State and federal attacks targeting transgender life have triggered suicidal ideation in some and caused the deaths of transgender Americans.
“The people who support these bills know that the science overwhelmingly supports gender-affirming care, and that’s why they’re trying to ban it,” said one transgender woman in Austin. “They want us in the closet or in early graves, and this is one of their primary attack vectors. They are trying to exterminate an ‘undesirable’ demographic by attacking our access to lifesaving healthcare.”
If passed, HB 3399 would force transgender Texans to detransition and end the lives they’d created for themselves prior to the legislation’s introduction. A transgender man living in Rockdale, Texas, called it “gross government overreach and flat out cruelty” in an email to KXAN.
Britney, another Austin resident and seventh generation Texan, is one of many who plan to leave the state. She said she’s expected a bill like HB 3399 for a long time.
“I think a lot about the old Davy Crockett quote…’you may all go to hell, but I will go to Texas.’ There was this feeling of Texans being about personal freedoms, safety, the wide open range and being able to live your life,” she said. “This is the first time that I’m really looking at the state that I grew up in as a place hostile towards me, as some place that is not for freedom for every person, that is not for the acceptance and authenticity of any person to live how they want.”
Although she will leave Texas, she said she wants to return someday.
“I still have hope for Texas. I very much believe that Texas has the capability to be the state that I envisioned growing up, this land of opportunity and freedom for all Americans, but it is quickly not becoming one right now,” she said. “Though I leave, I wish someday to return when y’all means all again.”
