Ms. Magazine warns of “dangerous parallels” between a transgender case due to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Dobbs v. Jackson case, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“On Wednesday, Dec. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case challenging Tennessee’s ban on healthcare for trans youth,” Oliver Haug writes for Ms. “The case is the first of its kind to be heard by the nation’s highest court — and as such will likely set an important precedent for future trans rights cases.”
Both Dobbs and Skrmetti are about “prohibitions on a medical treatment that is vital to the self-determination of a subset of the population,” the article states, citing Ms. contributor Madiba K. Dennie.
And in both cases, “conservatives are using the regulation of a medical procedure to target a particular group of people in a way that circumscribes their autonomy, worsens their quality of life, and renders them unequal under law,” Dennie argues.
In 2023, Tennessee passed law SB1 restricting certain medical treatments for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, saying it must “take action to protect the health and welfare of minors.”
The legislature determines that “medical procedures that alter a minor’s hormonal balance, remove a minor’s sex organs, or otherwise change a minor’s physical appearance” are harmful to a minor when they are performed to treat a “purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or the discomfort or distress from gender dysphoria.
These procedures “can lead to the minor becoming irreversibly sterile, having increased risk of disease and illness, or suffering from adverse and sometimes fatal psychological consequences,” the bill asserted.
Moreover, many of these types of medical procedures “are experimental in nature and not supported by high-quality, long-term medical studies,” the legislature noted.
There is, also, evidence that medical procedures that alter a minor’s hormonal balance, remove a minor’s sex organs, or otherwise change a minor’s physical appearance “are not consistent with professional medical standards” when performed for the above purposes,” it added.
Jennifer C. Pizer, chief legal officer for Lambda Legal, an LGBT advocacy group, described the Tennessee legislation and similar laws as “cruel, unprecedented and discriminatory attacks on transgender youth.”
