INDIANAPOLIS — As a controversial bill that would ban gender affirming care for minors works its way through the Indiana Statehouse, Attorney General Todd Rokita is asking questions to several medical facilities in Indiana.
Senate Bill 480 would prohibit physicians or practitioners from knowingly providing gender transition procedures to a minor. It also prohibits them from referring minors to other practitioners for those procedures.
Physicians may continue to prescribe testosterone or estrogen on June 30 as part of a gender transition procedure until Dec. 31. This portion of the bill expires Jan. 1, 2024.
Rokita is asking the facilities about "possible sterilization procedures performed on vulnerable children in order to “transition” them to a gender other than their biological sex."
"Doctors, clinics and hospitals are increasingly prescribing puberty blockers, sex hormones, and even surgeries to minor children without disclosing the known risks (including sterilization) and the many unknown risks," the letter reads.
"We all love our children and want nothing more than to keep them healthy and safe,” Attorney General Rokita said in a statement. “But every parent knows that our kids’ brains are not fully developed until adulthood, and they can change their moods and their minds daily.”
Rokita has not disclosed which facilities he sent the letter to.
You can read the full letter here.
ACLU of Indiana Legal Director, Ken Falk, issued the following statement in response:
“These clinics provide medically necessary care to their patients and have no greater obligation to answer these inquiries than if they had been made by any other person in Indiana. We are very concerned about the Constitutional implications of gender affirming care restrictions moving through the Indiana General Assembly, and the letter that the Attorney General distributed to Indiana clinics attempts to validate this unjustified discriminatory legislation.”
