A proposed act carried over from last year’s legislative sessions by four Republican representatives in Kansas attempts to criminalize gender-affirming care for trans youth by referring to it as a severity level 8 felony for doctors providing the service.

While the bill calls this lifesaving healthcare “unlawful” to strip trans youth’s right to self-determination, it simultaneously protects harmful, nonconsensual surgeries on intersex minors.

While medical professionals providing gender-affirming care to trans youth can be at risk of up to 18 months of probation under this bill, doctors will still be allowed to prescribe puberty blockers to cisgender children.

“Puberty blockers have been used for decades in cisgender kids who either are going through puberty too early, or, in some instances, kids who are going through puberty very quickly,” Pediatric Endocrinologist Jason Klein told VICE. “Their use has been FDA approved, well-studied, well-documented, and well-tolerated for a long time now. And it’s the exact same medication that we use in trans or nonbinary children to basically put a pause on pubertal development.”

More than half of trans children were at risk of suicide this past year, and access to gender-affirming care is linked to being at lower risk of attempting suicide by nearly 40 percent in transgender and nonbinary youth, Trevor Project found.

The bill follows another common theme of erasure and misgendering in these legislative attacks: it doesn’t use the word “transgender” even once.

KS HB 2210 is active as of Jan 10th, 2022.