Missouri Republicans throw transgender kids into line of fire on abortion debate
A Missouri family stands by their doormat at a home they are soon to leave — inspired to move bills that seek limiting medical care and other rights for their transgender son (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
Republicans in the Missouri legislature want everyone to know that they are very concerned about protecting children.
Not so much the 130 children and teenagers who die from gunfire in an average year. Those deaths, about two-thirds of which are homicides, are unfortunate collateral damage in the race to make firearms ever more accessible in Missouri.
And not the untold number of children who go hungry and without medical care because the state can't figure out how to fix its broken-down application processes for SNAP and Medicaid. Those kids are on their own.
The children of keen interest to Missouri Republicans are the very small number who may, as teenagers, seek medical treatment to deal with strong feelings that they are meant to be another gender than the one they were assigned at birth.
These are children who, with the consent of their parents, may try to slow down changes in their bodies with puberty-blocking medications, or use hormones consistent with the gender they identify with. A very small number may opt for gender-affirming surgery.
We're not talking about a lot of kids here. Less than 1% of the state's population is estimated to be transgender, and that percentage holds true for teenagers. Missouri Republicans, however, are fixated on them. They spend hours in committee meetings and floor debates professing concern for their health — while at the same time obsessing over what bathrooms they can use at school and the prospect that someone assigned male at birth might show up on a girls' softball roster.
Most recently, Republicans awarded transgender children a starring role in a piece of legislation that's destined to make Missouri meaner and angrier than we currently find it. That would be their attempt to overthrow the will of voters and reinstate an abortion ban.
HJR 73, the resolution that caused the 2025 legislative session to dissolve into chaos last month, asks voters to approve a constitutional amendment that would outlaw abortion except in a few circumstances. It would also, as its proposed ballot language states, 'protect children from gender transition' by banning the use of puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries.
Missouri already has a law that outlaws gender-affirming health care for minors through 2027, when the statute would have to be renewed. The unnecessary ballot provision is a cynical ploy to lure social-issues voters who might otherwise support abortion rights.
'The legislature chooses to use the word 'protect,' but that's not the word that the community of trans and queer folks and parents of trans kids would use,' said Katy Erker-Lynch, the executive director of PROMO, an advocacy group for LGBTQ citizens in Missouri.
Neither would many of us. Responsible adults don't drag vulnerable teenagers into an incendiary debate, expose them to intense public scrutiny and deprive them of health care that a consensus of medical groups agree can lower risks of suicide.
But, to state the obvious, this isn't about the kids. This is about power and deception.
A majority of Missouri voters support abortion rights. They made that clear in November when they approved Constitutional Amendment 3, which enshrined the right to abortion in the state.
Legislative Republicans can't let that stand, but they also know they're crosswise with the will of the people. And so they are throwing transgender children into the line of fire.
'It is cruel, but it is the only chance they have at overturning the right to abortion,' said state Sen. Patty Lewis, a Democratic from Kansas City.
Missouri politicians have long sought to use transgender people, and youth especially, to further their careers.
The state's senior U.S. senator, Josh Hawley, has launched numerous attacks on transgender health care. The current attorney general, Andrew Bailey, is in an ongoing fight to obtain sensitive health care records from clinics in the state that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
As this year's legislative session approached, PROMO tracked at least a dozen bills targeting transgender people, most centered on curbing their health care. Many were linked to attacks on abortion rights, using the contentious rationale that the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision hands states the authority not only to regulate abortion but transgender health care as well.
'Threats to abortion care and trans health care are interconnected,' Erker-Lynch said. 'They're very strategic and intentional.'
In a survey last year of Missouri youth who identify as LGBTQ, conducted by The Trevor Project, a research and advocacy group, 92% said recent politics harmed their well being and 61% said they or their parents had thought about leaving the state for that reason. Among people who identified as transgender and nonbinary, 67% wanted to leave.
That's a lot of people who don't seem to feel protected. And the survey predated HJR 73.
'If our legislators really seek to protect children,' Erker-Lynch said, 'they can look at the way they're encouraging bullying, the way that they're encouraging discrimination, the way they're refusing access to care.'
They should, but they won't. Not with their desperate effort to ban abortion in the balance.
The transgender health care provision in Republicans' proposed constitutional amendment is being called 'ballot candy' — a sweetener for voters who are swayed by social issues.
Too much candy is bad for childrens' health. And so are the Missouri Republicans who callously placed transgender kids in the midst of their deceptive effort to ban abortion.
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