Kansas House committee makes progress on bills stopping trans drugs, surgery for minors 

A committee of the Kansas House of Representatives debated a pair of bills that would prohibit treatments for gender dysphoria in minor children.

HB 2791 and HB 2792 would prohibit doctors from administering gender transition treatment, including surgery and hormone therapy.

“Transgender treatments manipulate or destroy tissue or flesh in otherwise healthy bodies to treat mental problems,” one of the bills’ sponsors, Rep. Ron Bryce, R-Coffeyville, told the House Committee on Health and Human Services, according to local KSNT NBC News. “For the sake of comparison, I’d like to draw attention to another historical practice – the practice of lobotomy that was part of the mainstream care in its heyday. Like trans treatments, it manipulates or destroys healthy tissue in order to treat mental problems.” 

One doctor who has specialized in gender treatments since 1988 told the committee the bill is necessary because transgender treatments are “life damaging” for minor youth, even if they continue to transition, which is often not the case.   

Previously, Dr. Ivan Abdus worked as the medical director for the Omaha Gender Identity Team. 

Now, Abdus opposes such care, “after decades of first-hand experience, dealing with the ramifications of medical and surgical management.” 

“Puberty blockers, often presented as safe and reversible, have been linked to problems with bone growth, bone weakening, abnormal blood clotting, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, decreased white blood cells, paralysis, convulsions, emotional instability, and suicidal ideation and attempts,” Abdus said last year.  

“Hormone therapy can leave a child or adolescent with irreversible effects if they change their mind (detransition or desist) — e.g., lower voice, male pattern hair, and enlarged clitoris in transmasculine youth; breast development in transfeminine youth; difficulties with having children in some. And surgery, of course, brings about permanent changes that cannot be undone.” 

Eli Huber, Kansas state director of Heritage Action for America, said the hearings went well, predicting that ultimately the Kansas House will pass the legislation.  

“This is a common-sense piece of legislation that protects children from harmful so-called ‘gender treatments,” Huber told The Lion. “Time and time again, studies have shown that children are worse off after receiving hormones under the guise of treating gender confusion.” 

In addition to prohibiting treatment, HB 2791 would allow a civil cause of action against healthcare professionals for providing such treatments, allow for professional discipline against a physician who performs such treatment, prohibit professional liability insurance from covering damages for healthcare providers that provide gender transition treatment to children, and add a violation of the act to the definition of unprofessional conduct for physicians and nurses. 

Concerned Women of America (CWA) put out an “Action Alert” to its members for the hearing, asking them to contact Kansas House committee members in support of HB 2791.  

“[Y]our voice is needed to protect children from the gender ideology obsession that manipulates children and instills confusion and hopelessness in young minds,” said the CWA alert. “Using children for medical experiments that have no basis in science must be stopped.”   

The measures will almost certainly be vetoed by Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly, after she vetoed a similar proposal last year, SB 26, The Kansas Child Mutilation Prevention Act.  

The Kansas Senate fell a few votes shy of overriding the veto in the 2023 legislative session.  

Huber told The Lion that this time passage is “essential.”  

“Children are not experiments and often outgrow those feelings and embrace their biological reality,” he said. “It’s essential that Kansas pass legislation that safeguards the future generations of our state. Gender theory is not based on scientific facts but is rather a movement to push the far left’s political agenda.”