On Feb. 22, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered his state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to consider gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents child abuse.
Later that week, according to a new lawsuit, an employee of Texas DFPS whose 16-year-old daughter is trans went to her boss to ask how the governor’s order would affect her family. She was placed on administrative leave later that day, and investigators from her employer showed up at her home, demanding medical records, the lawsuit said.
The message was clear: No one is safe from Abbott’s transgender family purge.
The message was clear: No one is safe from Abbott’s transgender family purge.
After at least a year of anti-trans bills cropping up in states across the country, Democrats finally seemed to have found their voice when reports of the Texas case surfaced. But the question remains: How far will Republicans like Abbott go to win offices, and how many trans children will be harmed in the process?
“This is government overreach at its worst,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Wednesday evening. “Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the Governor’s actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points. These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop.”
Abbott cruised to victory in his Tuesday primary over two even more conservative opponents. Both had tried to attack the governor for his government’s previous inability to pass a ban on gender-affirming care for youth through the Legislature. It appears Abbott chose to neutralize his critics through executive power. The move appeared to work for Abbott electorally, even as his own government turned against a colleague overnight.
An Abbott campaign adviser gloated about it Wednesday morning on a call with reporters, according to a tweet from The Washington Post’s David Weigel.
“That is a 75-80% winner,” adviser Dave Carney said. “I don’t believe even [Beto] O’Rourke would think that if a parent [cut] off the hand of their kid, that would not be child abuse.”
On #TXGov call, I asked Abbott campaign about running on his “gender-affirming care = child abuse” order.
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) March 2, 2022
“That is a 75-80% winner,” said @granitewinger. “I don’t believe even O’Rourke would think that if a parent caught off the hand of their kid, that would not be child abuse.”
Carney, of course, is pushing the false idea that parents are allowing their trans children to get gender-related surgery, which is exceedingly rare for people under 18 and already not offered within the state of Texas. It’s an effective fear-mongering tactic in the face of Democrats, who have consistently seemed afraid to take this issue on directly.
Biden said in his State of the Union address Tuesday that he has trans kids’ backs, and he called for passage of the Equality Act, an already legislatively dead bill that cannot pass unless the filibuster is removed. Biden’s language was a near-exact repeat of his address to Congress when he took office a year ago. In the year in between, Republicans have only turned up the heated rhetoric attacking trans kids and their loving families.
In another response, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reiterated trans peoples’ right to privacy under HIPAA. The Children’s Bureau, which is responsible for distributing funding to state departments of child protective services like Texas’, issued a statement reminding those departments of their obligation to protect children from discrimination based on gender identity.
The threat there is pretty clear: If Texas messes with trans kids, it risks losing federal funding for a system that is already dramatically underfunded.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the HHS Office for Civil Rights — which under the Trump administration was the federal leader in curtailing trans rights — announced it would intervene and defend trans kids and their families from targeted attacks from state agencies.
For a long time, there’s been a real rhetoric imbalance between the two parties and their media ecosystems on this issue. Conservative media outlets typically run multiple pieces a week demonizing everything transgender. Mainstream media outlets typically don’t have a trans journalist on staff covering anything, much less trans issues. The new Texas policy is by far the worst anti-trans government action in the U.S. that I’ve seen since I started covering trans issues in 2016. This translates directly into the political dynamic: The imbalance allows conservative politicians to batter away at trans people, whether it’s the more controversial trans athlete issue or, in this case, an extremist overreach in Texas DFPS policy. A quick look at the United Nations’ definition of genocide shows that Abbott’s new policy fits three of the criteria (causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group) although only one is required to consider something a genocide. Some may say that’s a harsh judgment. It’s not. The new Texas policy is by far the worst anti-trans government action in the U.S. that I’ve seen since I started covering trans issues in 2016. It’s worse than North Carolina’s bathroom bill, worse than former President Donald Trump’s trans military ban and much worse than any of the trans athlete bans. We’re talking about the government coming in and not just potentially removing a trans kid from a loving home, but possibly any other kids being raised by those parents, too. The parents would be recorded on the state child abuse registry, which would likely affect future employment. Doctors and therapists who do not turn in their trans clients could face legal penalties. Imagine the trauma of a teenager getting physically removed from the only family home they have to be dumped into an underfunded state foster system that already struggles to provide enough beds to meet demand. All so Abbott can win a primary campaign. Gender-affirming care is approved and recognized by every major medical association in the United States. Puberty blockers and eventually hormones for older teens have been prescribed for trans teens for several decades, and until recently, it was fairly uncontroversial among the general public. Trans people have been asking Biden for action instead of words for a while now. Let’s hope his recent statement means he’s ready to act.
Katelyn Burns is a freelance journalist based in New England. 
