Key Points: 

• Arizona state senators propose bill to restrict medical care for transgender children

• Senators claim children are being “mutilated” by transgender surgery, despite it being illegal for years

• Democrats argue the measures send a message that the state is trying to “erase” transgender children

State senators are using the claim that children are being “mutilated” by transgender surgery to block any form of hormone treatment or medical help for transgender children — even though it’s been illegal for years for doctors to conduct “gender-affirming surgery” on minors in Arizona.

“We are now starting to see these children grow up,” said Senate President Warren Petersen.

“They have been mutilated, they have been chemically castrated, they have been basically treated as experiments by adults,” said the Gilbert Republican. “This is a barbaric practice, this is torture, mutilation.”

However, a 2022 law already makes it a crime to perform “irreversible gender reassignment surgery” on minors.

But that fact did not stop proponents of SB 1095 from using that to advance a measure that would cut off the ability of minors who already are getting other treatments, like hormone treatments, from getting further care from their doctors in Arizona.

“Blocking access to these drugs for the minors who rely upon them is cruel and dehumanizing,” said Sen. Lauren Kuby. 

Kuby said doctors already follow a standard of care.

“Why are we interfering with that standard of care,” she asked. “Any decision to move down this path of puberty blockers or hormones is already taken slowly according to specified criteria based on medical science.”

And she said that all medical treatment is performed with the informed consent of both the minor and the parents.

The move to further restrict certain care for transgender individuals was just one of several measures also approved Monday by the Senate on party-line votes.

Other measures would:

• Restrict the use of bathrooms and locker rooms at schools to the gender a student was assigned at birth;
• Prohibit teachers from referring to a student by a preferred pronoun or name unless the parents first approve;
• Making doctors who perform gender transition procedures on minors subject to strict personal liability for all costs if that person wants to “detransition” within 25 years of when the process starts.

The proposals on bathrooms and pronouns are being combined into a single measure — and done in a way that would leave the final word to voters in November. That is designed to get around Gov. Katie Hobbs, who has already vetoed both of these ideas.

Monday’s votes came over the objections of Democrats who said that all these measures send a message to transgender children that the state is trying to “erase” them.

But Sen. Mark Finchem said the issue is more basic.

“The operable word in this bill is ‘minors,’ not adults capable of making long-term decisions,” said the Prescott Republican. Consider, he said, the fact that lawmakers have decided that minors cannot buy cigarettes, alcohol or certain other products “because it damages their bodies.”

But Finchem, like Petersen, promoted the bill based on the already illegal surgery.

“It’s been testified in hearings that many of these young people were convinced that if they didn’t alter their body … they’d kill themselves,” he said. “I think it’s reprehensible for a medical professional to tell a child that,” saying they are “children incapable of making decisions that are long term.”

And Finchem insisted that some of what passes for a person’s belief that he or she is in the wrong body is transitory.

“When you have a young lady who thinks she is a tomboy — and I know plenty of them, that’s kind of a country thing — they move past that given time and they work through whatever adolescent challenges they might have,” he said.

But Kuby, in discussing the related measure on physician liability, said there is no data to suggest that there is a large percent of people who, having undergone sexual reassignment, are looking to go back.

She said a survey of more than 84,000 transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming individuals who were older than 18 found that less than one-half percent had detransitioned back to the gender of their birth.

“The same survey said 98% felt happier and healthy after they embraced the person they were meant to be,” Kuby said.

Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, argued that there is a broader reason for lawmakers to reject any effort to decide what medical treatments are available — bad precedent.

“If we pass something as broad and far-reaching as SB 1095 for one medical treatment today, what stops this body from doing it to other medical treatments or procedures?” she asked. “What’s the next procedure we will attack because it offends the sensibilities of someone on this floor,” Ortiz continued.

SCR 1006 is a retread of previously vetoed efforts by Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh to control who uses which bathrooms and locker rooms, and whether teachers must honor a student’s request to be addressed by a name or pronoun of their choice. But the Fountain Hills Republican acknowledged that the underlying issue is that voters, who will get to decide the issue, do not believe there is such a thing as transgenderism.

“Our society has not gotten to that point where a sizable number of people think that you can will yourself to a different biological gender,” he said. More to the point, Kavanagh said, it “recognizes that human beings have modesty, especially that 16-year-old female who may have to be standing in an open school shower next to an 18-year-old biological male who identifies as female.”

Foes questioned whether most schools actually have open showers. But they also asked exactly how all this would be enforced.

“What are we going to have, the penis police here?” asked Kuby.

Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan said there’s more to SCR 1006.

She said the same measure that senators voted to put on the ballot says if someone was born a boy, a teacher must address that person as “he.” Nor can the teacher respect a biological male student’s request to be called a different name than one that normally aligns with their gender.

“I really do not understand the Republican obsession with genitals, children’s genitals, here, when it’s no surprise the leader of their party, the president of the United States, continues to block accountability for the Epstein files,” said Sundareshan.

Kavanagh, however, said that the issue of preferred pronouns is important because it may be an indication of gender dysphoria, something that should be brought to a parent’s attention because he believes it could lead to suicide.

Sen. Mitzi Epstein said it is true that depression and suicide are higher among transgender individuals.

“And the reason is not because of who they are,” said the Tempe Democrat.

“The reason for that depression is because of the way that society treats them,” she said. “And the way that society treats them is shown in bills like this.”

Proposals dealing with the question of biological sex versus gender are not new at the Legislature.

There is, for example, a 2022 law that says that sports designated for women or girls “may not be open to students of the male sex.” And by “sex,” the law means the one assigned at birth.

There are also efforts to overrule a federal judge’s decision that individuals undergoing transition are entitled to seek an amended birth certificate from the Department of Health Services.