Autism cited as one reason for Georgia trans law

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The Georgia Senate on Monday greenlit a measure that would ban some transgender interventions for minors, forwarding the bill to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature. The move came after the Senate approved changes made to the bill by the Georgia House of Representatives.

Kemp is expected to approve the measure.

The law, SB 140, would explicitly prohibit “[s]ex reassignment surgeries, or any other surgical procedures, that are performed for the purpose of altering primary or secondary sexual characteristics” for people under the age of 18 as a treatment for “gender dysphoria.”

Georgia’s medical providers would also be banned from providing cross-sex hormones to gender-confused minors. However, the law doesn’t forbid prescription of puberty-blocking drugs.

Carve-outs are provided for children who are already taking irreversible hormones, or young people with a “medically verifiable” condition requiring intervention.

In the text of the legislation, the Georgia General Assembly provided backing for the measure by noting that “[t]here has been a massive unexplained rise in diagnoses of gender dysphoria among children over the past 10 years, with most of those experiencing this phenomenon being girls.

The lawmakers also pointed out that gender dysphoria likely coincides “with other mental health and developmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder,” noted that most children outgrow gender dysphoria after passing through adolescence.