For Immediate Release:
August 17, 2023
For press inquiries only, contact:
Amanda Priest (334) 322-5694
Cameron Mixon (334) 242-7491
(Montgomery) – Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a multistate brief supporting Missouri’s defense of its ban on experimental and life-altering sex-modification procedures for children. The 16-state brief co-led by Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee directly addresses the disingenuous efforts by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and other medical interest groups that urge courts to defer to them on issues of pediatric sex changes.
“In reality, the latest WPATH standards are gender ideology talking points masquerading as medical standards. These so-called standards advocate prescribing some children puberty blockers and having them undergo life-altering surgeries because it is considered ‘medically necessary gender affirming care,’” said Attorney General Marshall. “Our youth deserve better, and I will never stop fighting to protect our children from these radical and often irreversible medical interventions.”
Invoking a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that allowed Tennessee’s similar law to take effect, the brief argues that the Constitution entrusts states with the “authority, in truth a responsibility, to look after the health and safety” of children. The brief argues that as European healthcare authorities have sharply restricted access to sex-modification procedures for minors in response to systematic reviews of the evidence, American medical organizations have continued to ignore the evidence and advocate for unfettered access to the procedures. “States like Missouri,” the brief argued, did not have to do the same and “could rationally take the side of caution before permitting irreversible medical treatments” on children.
Attorney General Marshall was joined on the brief by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Tennessee, Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia.
-30-
