1. United States
2. Pa.
3. Letter

Congress must defend the rights of their constituents to access medically necessary care and to defend the rights of doctors, not Marjorie Taylor Greene or Dan Crenshaw, to determine what treatments patients have access to. We are calling on all members of the House, no matter their party, to take action to protect the health and well-being of all youth by VOTING NO on Majorie Taylor Greene and Dan Crenshaw's discriminatory anti-trans bills, H.R. 3492 and H.R. 498. Opposing these extreme attack on trans and intersex people means protecting access to medically necessary healthcare for all people, regardless of their identity!  Introduced by Representative Marjorie Taylor-Green [GA], H.R. 3492 is a dangerous and discriminatory bill which seeks to criminalize the provision of consensual transition-related care while explicitly permitting non-consensual surgeries performed on intersex infants. The bill's only purpose is to target transgender and gender-diverse, by denying us safe and medically necessary healthcare, in order to enforce rigid, outdated gender norms.  House conservatives are also advancing Dan Crenshaw's [TX], H.R. 498, another dangerous and discriminatory bill that seeks to prohibit the use of Federal Medicaid funds to cover transition-related health care for adolescents. For many, the prohibition of the use of Federal Medicaid funds would likely have the effect of a de facto ban on this care, especially for families facing severe socio-economic barriers to care.  Transition-related healthcare has been safely provided to trans and gender-diverse adolescents for well over four decades, in keeping with medical best practices, scientific evidence, and rigorous standards of care.  Research has shown time and again that transition-related healthcare not only improves mental health outcomes but can be lifesaving. Transition-related healthcare has been proven to reduce rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, disordered eating, and suicidality amongst trans people of all ages. H.R. 3492 seeks to target licensed medical providers by criminalizing the provision of this care, threatening both financial penalties and jail time. But, criminalizing this medically necessary care does not protect anybody, nor does it protect intersex infants who are subjected to nonconsensual genital surgeries.  Marjorie Taylor Green's bill, H.R. 3492, is a cruel distortion of what it means to protect children. If passed, it will open the door to even more attacks on LGBTQI+ people, people seeking reproductive healthcare, people of color, people with disabilities, and low-income communities. We must protect access to care, autonomy, and dignity for everyone, no matter who they are. Similarly, Dan Crenshaw's H.R. 498 in wholly antithetical to the purposes of the Medicaid Act: to expand access to medically necessary care, not ration it based on a person's adherence to outdated ideas of sex and gender.