After failing in Senate, Josh Hawley urges House to ban funding for trans youth healthcare

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley says Congress just hasn’t done enough to hurt trans youth’s access to healthcare. Missouri’s senior U.S. Senator wants a ban on any taxpayer funding for “trans-treatment,” even though his colleagues in the Senate have already rejected such a prohibition.

He sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson calling for the Republican House to amend a budget resolution with language barring any funding for transgender treatment for minors.

“The ball is now in your court,” Hawley said. “If the House fails to act immediately as part of reconciliation, billions of Federal dollars will go to Planned Parenthood and other medical 'providers' for hormones, puberty blockers, and irreversible treatments for minor children. This is unconscionable. Not one dollar of federal tax dollars should be used for this purpose. I urge you to act without delay.”

The House in December voted in favor of a bill that would make doctors and parents criminals for providing gender-affirming medical care to transgender minors, marking the first time a chamber of Congress approved a national ban on such treatment. But that was never expected to pass in the Senate. Hawley tried to attach the measure to a budget resolution, but it failed.

Meanwhile, federal courts have blocked guidance issued by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy on restricting care to trans youth.

Hawley said the House needed to act with urgency, lest children obtain medical care.

“Time is of the essence. As you well know, on July 4, the current federal bar on taxpayer payments to trans-treatment and abortion providers will expire,” he wrote. “When that happens, billions of federal dollars will be diverted from Medicaid to pay for trans drugs and abortions.”

He specifically targeted Planned Parenthood, which his office labeled an “abortion provider” that received more than $1.5 billion in funding from Medicaid and Medicare between 2019 and 2021.

“We know what Planned Parenthood will use this money for. A new study by Concerned Women for America finds there has been a total increase of over 40 percent in ‘gender-affirming care,’ ‘gender-affirming visits,’ and ‘gender-affirming services’ at Planned Parenthood and its affiliates,” Hawley wrote. “Planned Parenthood is positioned to supercharge its transgender agenda with taxpayer funding taken from the elderly and those in need.”

Hawley holds a lengthy record of questioning transgender identity, even once inferring in a campaign email there is but one gender.