Earlier this week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay that will lift a lower court's injunction blocking SB 480, Indiana's ban on so-called "gender-affirming care." The law, originally set to take effect on July 1, 2023, will now take effect immediately.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) calls the ruling "beyond disappointing and a heartbreaking development for thousands of transgender youth, their doctors, and their families," but Micah Clark of AFA Indiana is pleased with it.
"Indiana was one of several states to pass a bill to require a child to wait 'til they're an adult before they make these life-altering decisions," he notes. "As we know, research shows most kids who wait and go through puberty, their gender identity confusion will disappear, it will go away, and they will align with what they truly are, what God made them as either male or female."
Major medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have fought restrictions such as the one in Indiana. Critics of those groups call them left-leaning.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Todd Rokita (R-Indiana) has referred to this state law as "commonsense."
Clark agrees.
"In Indiana law, like many states, you can't vote until you're 18, you can't get a tattoo [or] buy liquor until you're 21, you can't drive a car until you're 16," he lists. "There's all sorts of things that are not life-altering that we delay until a child's an adult. It makes no sense to say a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old or a 14-year-old can mutilate their body or take these dangerous drugs when they're not even an adult yet."
Several European countries, including Sweden and France, have moved away from gender manipulation procedures involving minors, which Clark says is the right thing to do. He points out that anorexic children, for example, are not given diet pills or liposuction surgery; they are given counseling because their mind is not in line with their body.
"Children need to be helped through this, not handed pills, not sent to a gender reassignment clinic, and certainly not mutilated by surgery," Clark submits. "That is a disservice to children, and they need to wait until they go through these changes. They need help, but they do not need drugs and surgery."
The ACLU, however, wants "all the transgender youth of Indiana to know this fight is far from over," as it plans to continue to challenge this law "until it is permanently defeated and Indiana is made a safer place to raise every family."
