Transgender, reproductive rights again a target for GOP lawmakers

Trevor Lee is introducing a bill that would effectively remove anti-discrimination protections for transgender people.

Utahns will again see a slate of bills from the GOP supermajority taking aim at transgender people and abortion access in this year’s session, setting up a possible fifth consecutive year of lawmakers restricting transgender rights.

One lawmaker who has developed a reputation for his enlistment in the culture wars is Lee, the Layton Republican, who during his initial campaign for the Legislature was criticized for using a slur to describe transgender people. This year, he’s introduced HB183, a 6,600-line bill that would have sweeping impacts on the transgender community.

If passed —in addition to a plethora of other restrictions— it would effectively remove anti-discrimination protections for transgender people, forbid Utahns from changing their gender on their birth certificate, bar employing transgender Utahns in some positions working with children and require judges overseeing battles for custody of transgender children to favor parents who refuse to support the child’s gender identity.

Less than a year after receiving a Legislature-commissioned medical evidence review concluding gender-affirming care is largely found to be beneficial for transgender youth, lawmakers are expected to weigh replacing a so-called moratorium on the treatments with a permanent ban.

Rep. Rex Shipp, R-Cedar City, has introduced HB174 to ban puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy for minors. Surgical procedures to change a transgender minor’s sex characteristics are already banned in Utah, and were previously extremely rare.

Rep. Nicholeen Peck, a Tooele Republican, wants to go further by restricting transgender adults’ access to gender-affirming health care. Her proposal, HB193, would prohibit public money from going toward transgender hormone therapy or sex characteristic surgical procedures — similar to a bill Peck unsuccessfully introduced last year.

If passed, it would effectively ban government workers insured by their employer from using that coverage for gender-affirming care, block Medicaid recipients from treatment and could close one of the largest transgender health programs in the state at the University of Utah.

Peck has also put forward HB232 to stop Utahns covered by Medicaid from receiving care at the state’s six Planned Parenthood clinics, mirroring a measure passed by Congress and being challenged in court.

Only two of those clinics offer abortion care — the vast majority of Planned Parenthood’s patients turn to its clinics for birth control, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, pregnancy testing and cancer screenings. Although a near-total ban is making its way through state courts, abortion remains legal up to 18 weeks in Utah.