We at the Transgender Education Network of Texas condemn the Texas Medical Association's response to bills targeting healthcare for trans youth.
On March 16, 2023, TMA registered “on” Senate Bill 14, a bill that would ban necessary, evidence-based healthcare for young people just because they are transgender while simultaneously allowing the same care to be provided to non-transgender youth. On March 27, 2023, TMA again only registered “on” House Bill 1686 — the House companion to SB 14. Further, when asked by the committee "to define a woman,” the President of TMA, Gary Floyd, MD, went out of his way to detail the physical and reproductive characteristics of cisgender women, thereby excluding women with chromosomal variations, cisgender women without the ability to give birth, and transgender women.
Not only do these bills directly target the accessibility of care that so many transgender young people rely on, but they also target the providers, many of whom are TMA members, who administer such care, leaving them vulnerable to lawsuits from the Attorney General and putting them at risk of being stripped of their medical license.
Tomorrow, SB 14 will be heard in the Texas House, one of the last hurdles it must overcome before reaching Governor Abbott's desk and becoming law.
It is not only unacceptable, but unconscionable for the country's largest state medical society, representing 57,000 doctors and medical students in Texas, to take a neutral stance regarding bills aiming to ban necessary, evidence-based, best-practice care for young people just because they are transgender and punish medical professionals for providing such care. TMA's harmful neutrality is against the backdrop of every major medical association, including TMA itself, recognizing that the care targeted by these bills is evidence-based and medically necessary.
Only when Senate Bill 1029 was heard in the Senate Committee on State Affairs on March 16, 2023, did TMA register “against” one of these bills targeting healthcare for trans people. The difference between this bill and SB 14 and HB 1686? SB 1029 would impact the accessibility of care for not just trans youth, but for trans adults too, and it would impose seemingly limitless liability for medical malpractice and strict liability tort claims — in other words, it would open the door for limitless lawsuits to be filed against providers of care for transgender individuals, thus having a “chilling effect” on care. Additionally, SB 1029 would bar health care for transgender people who have health insurance through the government.
TMA has failed all transgender Texans, but especially trans youth, by picking and choosing when the threat to evidence-based, best-practice, life-saving healthcare and providers of such care is severe enough to warrant taking a definitive stand in defense of it. TMA's legislative agenda clearly states the goal of “protecting the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship, whether from criminalization, interference from insurers and other nonmedical entities, or public health threats.” Their lack of action on these bills is an insult to their legislative priorities, organizational standards, and Hippocratic Oath.
We at TENT are calling upon members of the Texas Medical Association to contact TMA at (512) 370-1300, to email the President, Gary Floyd, MD at president@texmed.org, and sign onto this open letter to express disappointment with the Association's indifference to the future of care for transgender individuals in Texas, as well as to the Association's indifference to the ability of its members to lawfully practice in the state.
In solidarity with Trans and Gender Expansive Texans,
Transgender Education Network of Texas
To view our letter with footnotes and sources please click here.