What you need to know about Marjorie Taylor Greene's bill banning gender-affirming care for youth

Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, on her way out of Congress but still doing damage, got a vote on her bill to criminalize gender-affirming care for transgender youth — and the House of Representatives passed it, with three Democrats and all but four Republicans in support.

It was the first time a bill targeting gender-affirming care was voted on in the House. It now goes to the Senate.

How did Greene get a vote for her bill?

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said earlier this month that he would bring the bill to a vote in exchange for Greene’s support of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Related: Marjorie Taylor Greene, the anti-LGBTQ+ Republican congresswoman, to resign in January

“I made a deal and changed my NO vote on the rule to a Yes in exchange for a floor vote next week on my bill that is one of President Trump’s key campaign promises and executive orders,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on December 10. “Leader Steve Scalise has promised me that my bill Protect Children’s Innocence Act, H.R. 3492, will be brought to the floor for a vote next Wednesday, Dec 17th. This would make it a class c felony to trans a child under 18. Every Republican campaigned to protect kids from the trans agenda.”

There is no such thing as the trans agenda.

What is in Marjorie Taylor Greene's bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth?

Greene’s bill — called the Protect Children's Innocence Act — would criminalize medically necessary, often lifesaving care for transgender youth. It would make it a felony to provide puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for the treatment of gender dysphoria; the bill calls this “chemical castration,” even though it's not. It would also ban gender-affirming surgery, which the bill terms “bodily mutilation.” Genital gender-affirming surgery is almost never performed on minors, although some undergo top surgery.

Health care providers would be subject to a sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison and/or a significant fine for violations if the bill becomes law. Even helping a trans teenager cross state lines or access telehealth services for care could result in a decade-long prison sentence, and parents could be implicated if they administer medication prescribed for their children. The measure would not apply to cisgender youth seeking similar interventions, such as breast reduction, puberty suppression for precocious puberty, or other medically approved procedures. It additionally would make exemptions for surgeries on intersex infants, many of which are nonconsensual and medically unnecessary — a practice widely condemned by human rights groups.

Another bill set for a vote would bar Medicaid from paying for gender-affirming care for trans kids.It was introduced by Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, and Greene has cosponsored that legislation.

What is the history of the bill?

Greene first introduced the legislation in August 2022. She has kept bringing it up in subsequent sessions, and the House Judiciary Committee approved the bill on a party-line vote in June.

Related: 21 times Marjorie Taylor Greene was the worst

The NDAA itself contains some anti-trans provisions, including a ban on sports participation for trans women enrolled at military academies, as well as anti-DEI language. However, House and Senate negotiators have removed “a ban on funding for transgender-related surgeries, a policy that would have affected not only service members and their families but potentially any company with a military contract, blocking their insurance plans from covering transgender surgeries,” Erin in the Morning notes.

Last summer, the Supreme Court ruled that a ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors in Tennessee was constitutional. President Donald Trump also signed an executive order when he first took office again that banned federal agencies from funding groups supporting such care.

Democratically held states have continued providing gender-affirming care for trans youth. Over half of states ban this type of care.

Anti-trans laws like this one can lead to harm in young people. Suicide attempts among trans youth increased anywhere from 7 percent to 72 percent in states that enacted anti-trans laws, according to a new peer-reviewed study from The Trevor Project published in Nature.

The report examined the relationship between suicide risk and the 48 anti-transgender laws enacted in the across 19 different state governments between 2018 and 2022, using national survey data from more than 61,000 transgender and nonbinary youth. It concluded that anti-transgender laws "significantly increased" past-year suicide attempts among trans youth.

How have LGBTQ+ rights groups responded to Greene's bill?

The Human Rights Campaign swiftly condemned the plan to vote on Greene’s bill.

“Every family should have the freedom and privacy to go to the doctor and get the care their child needs,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in a press release. “But politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and her enablers, who are breathlessly obsessed with using their power to terrorize transgender people, believe they know better than parents and doctors. Now, anti-equality members of the House may consider a bill to put doctors in prison just for doing their jobs. That could mean a pediatrician facing jail time for providing the care they were trained to provide. It could mean a parent being handcuffed and tossed into a police car because they went to the pharmacy and administered their child’s medication as prescribed. Our leaders should be working out a solution to the impending crisis of soaring health care costs and ensuring every child has access to quality health care — not dreaming up new ways to use the power of government to tear people’s lives apart. We will not rest until this bill is defeated.”

The American Civil Liberties Union also released a statement calling on the House to reject the bill.

“This extreme bill puts the threat of prosecution between hundreds of thousands of families and their doctors and would put doctors behind bars for exercising their best medical judgment,” said Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU. “Passing this bill would be a grave escalation of an already severe effort to not only push transgender people out of public life but also allow the state to control our bodies and our lives further. Families with transgender youth across the country have already taken the dire step of leaving the United States for fear of exactly this kind of proposal becoming the law of the land. Abortion bans have already shown us the deadly consequences of putting baseless politics into our doctors’ offices. Every member of Congress who believes that health care decisions should stay between families and their doctors should vote no and vigorously oppose this bill’s passage. The fundamental equality of transgender people and our families is at stake now, but the implications of criminalizing health care could be far-reaching for everyone.”

If you or someone you know needs mental health resources and support, please call, text, or chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit 988lifeline.org for 24/7 access to free and confidential services. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.

Alex Cooper contributed reporting.