A bill to ban the administration of so-called “gender-affirming care” to minors has been defeated in the Republican-majority Louisiana Senate, after a Republican state senator with a history of dressing in drag voted against it.
State Senator Fred Mills killed House Bill 648, which would have prohibited “certain procedures to alter the sex of a minor child”, in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, where Republicans had a majority of one, by siding with the Democrats.
Since the vote, Mills’s history of repeatedly using drag to sell a pharmacy’s products and services – including school uniforms – has emerged, leading some to question his motives in voting down the bill.
“I always in my heart of hearts have believed that a decision should be made by a patient and a physician,” Mills argued in comments quoted by The Hill.
The evidence on which physicians justify transitioning children is currently very thin, however, with major, mainstream reviews in both Norway and Sweden recently recommending that “gender-affirming care” for minors be regarded as “experimental” due to the lack of research on its potentially devastating long-term consequences.
“Gender-affirming care” for minors would not be the first medical procedure to receive the stamp of physician approval before turning out to be medically inadvisable, with lobotomies to treat depression and birth defect-inducing thalidomide to treat morning sickness once common treatments, for example.