Flathead Valley legislators are expected to introduce bills restricting gender-affirming care in the fast approaching state legislative session.

Sen. Keith Regier, R-Kalispell, and Sen.-elect John Fuller, R-Whitefish, have both requested legislation prohibiting gender transition surgery on minors. Both bills were recently drafted and are similar in nature.

The Montana Legislature convenes for the 2023 session on Jan. 2.

Fuller’s draft bill, LC1360, specifically prohibits certain medications and medical procedures for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors. The bill defines gender dysphoria as a medical diagnosis based on a distinct difference between someone’s expressed gender and the gender assigned at birth.

Fuller, then a state representative, sponsored a similar bill during the 2021 legislative session. It was indefinitely postponed in the Senate in April 2021, essentially stopping the bill from becoming law. According to Fuller, the new version differs from the previous iteration because it includes chemical treatments, which were amended out of the 2021 version, as well as more definitions.

“The reality is, why would you use a surgical attempt to solve a psychological problem?” Fuller said of gender-affirming care.

Fuller said that the bill will include a provision for victims to seek reparations for procedures performed when they were a minor. According to Fuller, the bill serves as a symbol that Montanans “treasure their children and are determined to protect them.”

“This has nothing to do with what adults say or do,” he said. “This is designed to completely and totally protect children.”

Regier’s draft bill, LC0828, has the same end goal as Fuller’s legislation: prohibit transgender surgeries on minors. Regier’s bill argues that only a “tiny percentage of the American population experiences distress at identifying with their biological sex.” It also claims that suicide rates are higher among those who have undergone inpatient gender reassignment procedures and lists other negatives, such as the invasiveness of the surgeries themselves.

“... [The] risks of gender transition procedures far outweigh any benefit at this stage of clinical study on these procedures,” the bill reads.

Regier did not respond to requests for comment.

But contrary to the language of Regier’s bill, suicide risk reduces 78% in transgender youth who receive gender affirming care, according to a February 2022 scientific study led by Diana Tordoff of the University of Washington’s Department of Epidemiology. Further, a 2021 Harvard School of Public Health study found that gender affirming surgeries are associated with lower rates of psychological distress and suicidal ideation.

“Gender affirming care is life saving care,” said Rep.-elect Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, reflecting on the statistics. Zephyr is the first openly transgender woman elected to the Montana State Legislature.

Similar legislation is being introduced in statehouses around the country. Three bills prefiled in Missouri this month to aim to ban all gender-affirming healthcare for transgender minors. In Oklahoma, representatives are attempting to ban gender-affirming care for anyone under 21 years old. At least two bills prefiled in Texas seek to designate gender-affiriming care for minors as child abuse.

However, advocates of gender affirming care say that it is a patient driven, team effort between the individual, their family, their physicians, their psychiatrists and themselves rather than a snap decision.

According to the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, medical associations nationwide support gender affirming care for both adults and youth, including puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy and, in rare cases, surgeries.

In a 2020 statement, the Pediatric Endocrine Society said that “medical intervention for transgender youth and adults is effective, relatively safe, and has been established as the standard of care.”

Other institutions with similar sentiments include the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, and more. Nationally, gender affirming care has been seen as a best practice for transgender youth.

“To say that they are mutilating [children] is a gross misrepresentation of what these life saving treatments are,” Zephyr said.

Zephyr noted she had undergone gender affirming care.

“As a trans woman, I am living proof of that,” she said.

Reporter Kate Heston can be reached at kheston@dailyinterlake.com or at 758-4459.