Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs (D) on Tuesday vetoed the Detransitioner Bill of Rights (SB 1511), legislation that would give individuals seeking to de-transition the same rights and medical protections as those seeking to transition. “This bill would help hold the medical professionals and insurance companies that facilitate or perform so-called ‘gender transition’ surgeries accountable for their predatory actions by requiring them to provide equal coverage for detransition treatments,” explained Joseph Kohm, director of Public Policy for the Family Policy Alliance.
Arizona’s state government took a hard left-turn after enacting one of the first laws protecting minors from gender transition procedures in 2022. Hobbs’s election as governor that November broke up the Republican trifecta in Phoenix. Hobbs took advantage of the weakness of Arizona’s law — which, in its final form, only prohibited gender transition surgeries on minors and included no enforcement provisions — to issue an executive order shielding physicians who provide gender transition procedures from legal consequences.
Republicans, who narrowly retained control of the Arizona Senate and House, responded with the Detransitioner Bill of Rights. This bill would require that any health insurance contract “that provides coverage for gender transition procedures may not deny coverage for gender detransition procedures,” and any physician or health care institution “that performs gender transition procedures must agree to provide or pay for the performance of gender detransition procedures.”
“If doctors are going to block the natural puberty process of children and surgically alter the genitalia of people struggling with gender dysphoria, they must be prepared to undo the damage — as much as possible,” declared Arizona Senator Janae Shamp (R), who sponsored the bill. “And if insurers are going to pay for gender-altering drugs and surgeries, they must also pay for any effort to regain the victim’s God-given identity.”
SB 1511 passed the Arizona Senate on February 22 (16-12, with two Democrats not voting) and the Arizona House on June 4 (31-29), both along party lines.
Two weeks later, Hobbs vetoed the bill with a one-sentence explanation, “This bill is unnecessary and would create a privacy risk for patients.”
Such a curt reply suggests this bill is not something Hobbs wanted to talk about. Article V, Section Seven of the Arizona Constitution requires the governor to return a vetoed bill “with his [or, in this case, her] objections.” Otherwise, Hobbs likely would have sent no explanation at all. But, if there were merit to these objections, surely Hobbs would elaborate further. What Democrat passes up an opportunity to bash Republicans on patient privacy in health care? Yet Hobbs, despite citing privacy as the reason for her veto, bashed no Republicans at all.
Rather, I suggest that Hobbs said nothing further because there was nothing further to say. There are no legitimate objections to this bill that don’t make the objector sound like a complete monster — if really pressed to explain them. And Hobbs’s two curt, combined objections aren’t even true.
First, legislation to protect detransitioners is needed. By definition, “Detransitioners are people who regret the harm caused to them by undergoing harmful procedures to attempt to change their appearance and bodily functions to align with their perceived sex,” and “they now seek to live in alignment with their biological sex,” stated Kohm.
“It’s absolutely necessary,” declared Family Research Council Senior Fellow Walt Heyer, himself a detransitioner, on “Washington Watch.” “Many of the people have been radically harmed by … the hormones. … I know from my own experience that it took several years for my body to adjust back to the synthetic natural hormones in my body.”
“They need medical help. They need surgical help. They need psychological help,” pleaded Heyer. “To deny that opportunity for people to be properly treated, given effective sound treatments so that they can balance their life out, is really appalling.”
“My heart goes out to the growing number of people, especially children, who are struggling with their identity and are being pushed into physically altering their bodies as a solution, instead of receiving the mental health care they deserve,” said Shamp. She urged the legislature to require “equal treatment for people like Chloe Cole,” who as a child “was confused with her gender identity … was given puberty blockers and underwent a double mastectomy. She has since detransitioned and struggles with the severe damage left behind.”
“Parents are really kind of strong armed by these ‘doctors’ doing these procedures,” declared Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch,” “saying, ‘Hey, do you want a dead son or do you want a [living] daughter?’ And they’re kind of pushing kids into this. … It may be necessary because there are some regrets, and people want to come out of it.”
“Detransitioners are real and deserve protection and empowerment to tell their stories,” insisted Kohm. “Their stories are powerful examples of the dangers of so-called ‘gender affirming’ procedures pushed by transgender activists and predatory medical professionals.”
Second, the legislation would not expose patients’ private medical data. It does require health insurers to submit to state oversight by filing a monthly report with the state health department, listing “the number of insurance claims made for a gender detransition procedure,” along with the age, sex, date of treatment, and state/county of residence of the claimants.
However, the law explicitly forbade these reports to contain “the name of the individual,” “any common identifiers of the individual, including a social security number or driver license number,” or “any other information that is not required under this section and that would cause the individual to be identified.”
If pro-LGBT lawmakers really practiced what they preached, they would support the Detransitioner Bill of Rights. Here is legislation designed to protect a small minority of the population. They face bias, their very existence is denied, and all they want is to get potentially life-saving health care covered by insurance. It should be a slam dunk, right?
The fact that pro-LGBT lawmakers do not support the Detransitioner Bill of Rights — even to the point that every Democrat in the Arizona legislature voted against it, and the governor vetoed it — is a telling sign that they are not sincerely interested in promoting the well-being of all patients. Instead, they are interested in promoting an ideology with a political agenda. If these ideologues were to recognize the existence and needs of detransitioners, it would undermine their political agenda by demonstrating the shallow logic of transgender ideology and the transitory nature of transgender identity.
An analogous situation is the hatred abortion activists show towards pregnancy resource centers. The existence of pregnancy resource centers in no way prevents abortion facilities from carrying out their gruesome work, just as the existence of protections for detransitioners would in no way prevent the ongoing provision of gender transition procedures. Both simply provide an alternative — a morally preferable one — to the nature-defying practices endorsed by the Left. When faced with true choice and acceptance, the radical Left reveals that they hate both.
“It’s unfathomable that we consider mutilating an undeveloped child’s body as ‘health care,’” lamented Shamp, “but what’s even more horrifying is the fact that we deny them access to care when they go on to suffer the mental and physical consequences.”
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
