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Bill To Limit Gender-Affirming Health Care Advances In Senate

The House passed House Bill 2007 last month. During a public hearing on the bill in the House chamber last month, all but two of the dozens of speakers opposed it.

The Senate Health and Human Resources Committee approved a bill Thursday to ban gender-affirming health care for transgender minors.

The House passed House Bill 2007 last month. During a public hearing on the bill in the House chamber last month, all but two of the dozens of speakers opposed it.

HB 2007 would prohibit anyone under 18 from receiving puberty blockers or hormone therapy. It would also ban gender-confirmation surgery for minors, though there is no record of that taking place in West Virginia.

The Senate Health Committee heard from an expert witness, Kacie Kidd, a doctor at West Virginia University who provides gender-affirming care.

“I, to be very honest with you, am very concerned that the withdrawal of this care will result in very profound harm to the young people of our state,” said Kidd, medical director of WVU Medicine’s Children’s Gender and Sexual Development Clinic.

After Kidd’s testimony, the committee approved it and sent it to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The committee vote wasn’t entirely along party lines. Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, one of two physicians on the panel, spoke out against the bill and offered an amendment to ensure that any minor who is currently receiving treatment could continue to do so.

“I cannot, in good conscience, sanction a bill when we know the facts are that this therapy does improve the functionality of a child, it decreases suicide rates, it helps with their mental health,” he said.

Takubo’s amendment was defeated. Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, led the pushback.

“This is still a step where the state is saying it’s okay to go in and frankly, what I would consider, abuse of a child,” Tarr said. “It’s criminal.”

The committee’s chairman, Sen. Mike Maroney, R-Marshall, also a physician, supported Takubo’s amendment.

“This is legitimate, it’s just something that we don’t understand or don’t get. And that’s fine — I chose to stay quiet. But take the step to prohibit those already being treated, to deny them continued treatment? That’s not only uneducated, in my opinion,” he said, “that’s cruel.”

West Virginia is among two dozen states to attempt to restrict health care for transgender youth.

A similar bill in Kentucky was approved by that state’s House Education Committee and full House of Representatives on Thursday.

Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee signed a similar bill into law on Thursday.

Leah Willingham of the Associated Press contributed to this story.

Limits On Trans Youth Medical Care Move Through House

After a nearly two-hour public hearing on a bill that would prohibit transgender youth from obtaining gender affirming medical procedures, House Democrats tried to amend House Bill 2007.

After a nearly two-hour public hearing on a bill that would prohibit transgender youth from obtaining gender-affirming medical procedures, House Democrats tried to amend House Bill 2007.

Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, proposed an amendment that would forbid all minors from having cosmetic surgeries.

“Is this the first instance of prohibiting a procedure specifically for a minor?” she said. “I guess, can minors get a nose job? Can they get a rhinoplasty as long as their parents consent to it, whether it’s medical or cosmetic?”

Del. Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, voiced concerns that this would ban children from receiving care for cosmetic issues that were more serious.

“I don’t think that this is as well thought through as the delegate thought,” he said. “Because I think there’s a lot of care out there that is cosmetic in nature, that is not medically necessary. But I think a lot of us in here would agree, I want a kid that’s got the potential to solve a cleft palate problem to be able to solve it and that stuff still happens here in West Virginia as well. So I’d urge rejection.”

Young responded that Steele’s concerns were unfounded.

“I did a quick Google [search] and it says cleft palate surgery is medically necessary,” she said. “And I’m Googling it because I’m not a doctor, which is why I don’t want to be making people’s health care decisions that only a couple of us as doctors can, and those are the only ones who should be making health care decisions between patients and people. I hope you’ll support my amendment, because if we’re going to protect kids, we should protect all of them, not just the straight ones. If you want to say the kid should be allowed to get boob jobs, I guess you could vote no. So I guess we’ll see.”

Young’s amendment failed by a vote of 12 to 87, along party lines. House Bill 2007 is expected to be on third reading in the House on Friday.

House Committees Advance ‘Anti-Racism’ Bill And Restrictions To Gender-Affirming Medical Care

On this episode of The Legislature Today, Government Reporter Randy Yohe speaks with Senate Finance Chair Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, and House Finance Committee member Del. Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, to get the latest on the state budget.

On this episode of The Legislature Today, Government Reporter Randy Yohe speaks with Senate Finance Chair Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, and House Finance Committee member Del. Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, to get the latest on the state budget.

Also, the House Education Committee had a vigorous debate Monday on a bill titled the Anti-Racism Act of 2023. This is the same bill that died in the final hours of the 2022 state legislative session.

The House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill to restrict gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. As Curtis Tate reports, the bill has more restrictions than one approved earlier by the House Health and Human Resources Committee.

Finally, state education groups say school discipline is at a near crisis level. A bill debated in the House is intended to offer educators a tool to limit disruption in the classroom. Randy Yohe monitored that debate.

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The Legislature Today is West Virginia’s only television/radio simulcast devoted to covering the state’s 60-day regular legislative session.

Watch or listen to new episodes Monday through Friday at 6 p.m. on West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

Birth Certificate Changes Simpler For Transgender People After Lawsuit

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources’ Vital Registration Office has introduced more accessible and safer policies for transgender people to make changes to their birth certificates and the ACLU has ended its lawsuit.

Previously, the Vital Registration Office required transgender applicants to produce a circuit court order directing the change. In 2020, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ended the court’s ability to order such amendments. But the registration office didn’t change its policy.

In August 2021, the ACLU, ACLU of West Virginia, and the Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic brought a lawsuit. It demanded that the agency develop policies for transgender people to amend their gender marker and do it without having to disclose their transgender status on the amended birth certificate.

In April, the DHHR announced new birth certificate amendment policies.

Applicants, including transgender applicants, who are seeking to amend the gender marker on their West Virginia birth certificate, no longer need a court order. They need only provide a simple provider attestation form available from the West Virginia Vital Registration Office’s website.

Further, the new policies amend birth certificates in a manner that reduces the risk of outing transgender individuals who have had name and/or gender marker amendments by removing the previous information from the face of the newly amended birth certificate. These important policy implementations make birth certificate amendments more accessible and safer for transgender applicants.

“This is an incredible policy change not only for our clients but all transgender people with West Virginia birth certificates who require amendments,” said Taylor Brown, lead counsel and Staff Attorney with the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project. “West Virginia’s new policies restore a greater degree of autonomy and self-determination for transgender people in West Virginia. In today’s climate, it is more important than ever for the government to leave personal decisions of these kinds where they belong, between an individual and their provider. Not a court, legislators, or administrative bodies. This is an important win for those reasons alone.”

ACLU-WV Executive Director Joseph Cohen agreed. “This is a major victory for the thousands of transgender West Virginians who will now be able to obtain accurate birth certificates to help them navigate their lives more safely,” he said. “But we know our work is not yet finished. Nonbinary West Virginians are still unable to obtain a birth certificate that accurately reflects their gender. Since April of this year, U.S. citizens have been able to select an X gender marker on passport applications. We will continue to work with our partners to update West Virginia’s policies so that all West Virginians can have the accurate identity documents they need.”

Study: Health Care Barriers Exist For Transgender West Virginians

West Virginia University found that transgender people have a hard time accessing primary and gender-affirming care.

West Virginia University found that transgender people have a hard time accessing basic health care in the state, according to a study recently published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

That goes for both primary care and gender-affirming care, which includes hormone therapies or surgeries to align patients’ bodies with their gender identities. Accessing this kind of care has been tied to improvements in one’s mental health, according to a review of 20 studies on the topic.

Researchers at WVU interviewed 24 transgender and gender non-conforming people (18 adults and six minors) throughout the state. On average, participants said they had to travel an hour and half to get gender-affirming care. Seventy percent said they had to go out of state.

Thirty-eight percent of participants said their insurance did not cover this kind of care. Just as many participants we’re sure if it was covered.

“We had a person who had been on their gender-affirming hormone treatment for 20 years, and they got a new insurance, and the new insurance said ‘We’re not going to let you take that medication until you’ve gone to therapy for a year’,” said Megan Gandy, an author of the study and professor at WVU’s School of Social Work. “Here’s this person who’s been on this treatment for more than half of their life now suddenly having to go off of it.”

Participants also said they’re reluctant to see the doctor for primary care needs because of past encounters where they were discriminated against.

“A transgender person with a broken foot, well, they shouldn’t be treated any differently than any other patient, and yet they do get treated differently,” Gandy said.

Practitioners might misgender someone, mistakenly or deliberate, or refer to patients by their “dead name” they no longer go by.

Interview participants even shared stories of having unnecessary, invasive testing.

“One of our study participants had abdominal pain, and because they were a transgender man, meaning they were assigned female at birth, the emergency room doctor said ‘We’re going to do a cervical workup’ when in fact it wasn’t related to that part of their body at all… and it ended up not being part of their actual treatment,” Gandy said.

Researchers say training health providers, from the receptionist to the physician, on how to approach transgender patients would go a long way. WVU and Fairness WV are already doing some of that work.

Hormone therapy is available in the state through Planned Parenthood, WVU and certain primary care doctors.

Findings from a 2016 UCLA study suggest less than a half percent of West Virginian adults, about 6,000 people, are transgender. The same researchers found one percent of teens in the state, about 1,000 people, are transgender.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

Bill Would Ban Discredited Conversion Therapy In Charleston

Officials in West Virginia’s capital city have introduced a proposal to ban the discredited practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ children.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that Councilwoman Caitlin Cook, a council liaison to the city’s LGBTQ Working Group, introduced the bill on Monday.

Conversion therapy is a practice used to try to change sexual orientation or gender identity. Many people who have been through it say it deepened feelings of depression and increased thoughts of suicide.

If approved, Charleston would be the first in West Virginia to enact such a ban.

“This ordinance really is about protecting and valuing our LGBT community members that call Charleston home as well as and making it known to visitors that may come to Charleston that we are an inclusive community,” Cook said.

The proposed ordinance carries a fine of up to $1,000 for violations.