A few Democrats have joined more than a dozen of their Republican colleagues in the Maryland House of Delegates to propose a measure that would criminalize performing almost any form of trans-related medical intervention on a minor without parental consent.
On Wednesday, the Maryland House began considering HB 722, which would prohibit medical professionals from "attempting to alter the appearance of" a minor’s gender or sex or to "affirm the minor’s perception" of his or her gender without parent permission. Under the bill, all of the following would be banned for gender-confused children without the consent of a parent or guardian: puberty blockers; cross-sex hormones; and any surgical procedures that "sterilize," artificially attempt to construct cross-sex genitalia, or remove "any healthy or nondiseased body part or tissue."
The bill does allow a handful of exceptions, including for minors with a "medically verifiable disorder of sex development," those who have already been mutilated by previous gender-related medical interventions, and those who have sustained a catastrophic injury or illness that requires emergency surgery to prevent death or "major bodily" impairment. Of note, Maryland is one of just a handful of states that allows kids 12 and up to make some medical-related decisions without parental consent.
