House panel debates gender-affirming care bill
Republicans in Congress are pushing a controversial new bill that would pull federal funding from children’s hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for minors — a move that public health experts and pediatricians warn could have a seismic impact on transgender children’s mental health and those hospitals’ services overall.
The otherwise bipartisan hearing on a pack of bills got ugly fast. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said the legislation “subject[s] children’s hospitals to a manufactured culture war.” Sponsor Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) fired back that Democrats were making this a culture war — even though a provision like this has never been attached to children’s hospital reauthorizations before.
The committee heard from Yale doctor Meredithe McNamara, who sought to tamp down on misinformation about gender-affirming care and stress its benefits, and Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist who has argued against transgender care. The bill — which the panel will markup before any votes — is one of the first federal attempts to bar transgender care amid a storm of state bans and limits in the past year.
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