By Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — The Kansas Senate approved with a bipartisan supermajority a bill prohibiting health professionals from providing gender-affirming care to minors and enforcing that statewide ban with civil, financial and regulatory sanctions for violators.
The Senate voted 32-8 on Wednesday to forward the legislation to the Kansas House, where it was expected to be approved and sent to Gov. Laura Kelly. The Democratic governor vetoed a comparable bill last year, but the Legislature was unable to pull together two-thirds majorities necessary to override her.
Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican from Andover, said the Help Not Harm Act was necessary to protect children. He said surgeries, puberty blockers and other measures violated the duty of a medical professional to do no harm to the patient.
“A supermajority of the Kansas Senate took a firm stand in support of helping and not harming children by making it clear that transgender ideology and the mutilation of minors is no longer legal in Kansas,” Masterson said.
Masterson said credit for progress on the legislation should be shared with “courageous men and women who have spoken out against the harm these procedures are causing our children.”
The legislation was part of a multi-year campaign in Kansas to stop individuals under the age of 18 from receiving gender-affirming care. It was a political rejection of decisions by Kansans to seek treatment to address a condition described as gender dysphoria, in which a person experienced distress due to a mismatch between biological sex and gender identity.
Health and medical associations warned of harmful consequences to closing off care for youth. Opponents of the measure said it was outrageous to place in statute potential civil penalties and license revocations for professionals working within their scope of practice.
Such a law could be challenged on constitutional grounds. A Kansas Supreme Court decision affirming the right to abortion, which relied upon analysis of the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights, hinged on a belief Kansans had a core constitutional right to bodily autonomy.
Eight of nine Democrats in the Senate voted against the measure. All 31 Republicans voted for the bill, and that veto-proof majority was bolstered by support from Sen. David Haley, a Democrat from Kansas City, Kansas.
Sen. Cindy Holscher, D-Overland Park, offered an amendment — it was defeated — that would have allowed minors taking medication related to gender-affirming treatment to continue that regimen after a Dec. 31, 2025, deadline written into the bill.
“This bill is extreme and expands far beyond a ban on certain kinds of health care,” Holscher said. “This bill inserts politicians into highly personal, private health care situations and that is against the values of Kansans.”
Identical bills were introduced in the House and Senate to advance the anti-transgender agenda. Republican Sen. Renee Erickson of Wichita introduced Senate Bill 63, while Republican Rep. Ron Bryce of Coffeyville was responsible for House Bill 2071.
Committees in both chambers conducted public hearings on the bills, but the full Senate acted first. The House could move ahead with Bryce’s bill, which would be open to amendment, or simply concur with the Senate to move the bill as quickly as possible to Kelly.
Once it officially arrived on the governor’s desk, she would have 10 days to determine whether to veto it, sign it or allow it to become law without her signature.
In 2024, Kelly said Kansas shouldn’t join about two-dozen states that banned or restricted gender-affirming care for minors because those actions trampled parental rights and targeted a tiny sector of the state’s population.
“Voters do not want politicians getting between doctors and their patient by interfering in private medical decisions,” Kelly’s veto message said.
House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, responded to her veto by declaring she would “find herself on the wrong side of history.”
Masterson, the Senate’s president, pledged to override Kelly if she again stood in the way of legislation putting an “end to this extreme practice within our borders once and for all.”
Under Senate Bill 63, a civil cause of action would be created for lawsuits against health professionals involved in gender-affirming chemical or surgical interventions with minors. The measure would set the statute of limitations for such lawsuits at 10 years from the patient’s 18th birthday. The bill would prevent professional liability insurance from covering damages related to these suits.
The measure would restrain use of state tax dollars to promote gender transitioning. It would authorize professional disciplinary sanctions against health professionals responsible for delivering prohibited gender-affirming care.
If a physician prescribed drugs to a minor that were subsequently forbidden by law, the treatment would have to be gradually diminished and discontinued by Dec. 31.
Sen. Beverly Gossage, the Eudora Republican who carried the bill on the Senate floor, theorized 80% of minors seeking gender-affirming treatment suffered from autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, PTSD or some form of trauma. She said many seeking the treatment were victims of sexual abuse.
Gossage, who chairs the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, said three-fourths of these patients were females who were “often influenced by social media.” Physicians and mental health professionals were pressuring youth to accept medical intervention that could begin with puberty blockers and progress to surgery, she said.
“There’s a troubling trend of doctors and mental health experts who are overlooking the underlying issues and putting these kids on an assembly line to so-called gender-affirming care,” Gossage said. “Children are not a social experiment. They are being ushered down a conveyor belt to lifelong pharmaceutical dependencies.”
The Senate defeated an amendment proposed by Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa, to allow mental health professionals — school counselors, for example — to provide assistance to minors trying to work through gender issues.
The Senate rejected an amendment by Haley, the lone Democratic supporter of the bill, to change the threshold of medical independence in terms of an individual’s right to gender-affirming care from 18 in the bill to 14. Likewise, the Senate deflected an amendment that would have set the age of medical independence at 16.
Sen. Tory Marie Blew, R-Great Bend, quizzed her colleagues about the age at which a person could legally get a tattoo, vote or drink at a bar.
“At the age of 14, you can change your gender, but you can’t get a drink at a bar until you’re 21? Come on, people,” she said.
