Republicans in the Florida House of Representatives have passed a bill authorizing the state to take custody of children if their parents have agreed to give them gender-affirming health care. The law is obviously terrible policy. And it’s particularly hypocritical given that conservatives claim to support parental rights in making decisions about children’s well-being. The proposed law is also unlawful and certainly unconstitutional.
The reasons why illuminate core questions of government control of our bodies — issues that, in the post-Dobbs era, also come up in the context of abortion rights. Moreover, Florida is hardly alone in attempting to restrict minors’ access to gender-affirming care; more than a dozen states have such restrictions, whether by criminalizing the provision of such care (as North Dakota did this week) or by classifying it as child abuse (as Texas tried to do last year).
One problem with the Florida bill is that it overrides regulatory decisions made by the Food and Drug Administration. The drugs known as puberty blockers, which can be used in the treatment of gender-affirming care, have been around for 30 years and are safe and legal when prescribed by a physician. The Florida law is designed to make it impossible to administer those drugs to minors in the state.
