Mike Pence Vows to Ban Trans Healthcare for Minors if Elected President
Former Vice President and current Presidential candidate Mike Pence vowed to ban all forms of gender transition for minors in a CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall at the beginning of June.
“I strongly support state legislation, including, as we did in Indiana, that bans all gender transition, chemical or surgical procedures, under the age of 18,” Pence tells Dana Bash. He then adds that, “However adults want to live, they can live.” Bash did push back on the former VP, pointing out the hypocrisy of Pence touting parents’ rights but denying them the right to let their kids live as trans. “But in this particular case, parents who say, along with the doctors, that what is best for their kids, what their kids feel most comfortable with doing is gender transition, that the parents should not be allowed to do that?” Pence dodged the question and talked about how “radical gender ideology” has “taken hold in our schools; it’s taken hold in our universities; it is afoot across the nation.”
Pence has held firm on this position across multiple interviews. In another interview with the Des Moines Register, Pence says, “If there was a move in the Congress to protect children from this radical gender ideology and to ban chemical or surgical transition treatment for kids under the age of 18, you bet I would support it.” He went on to say, “But the fact that you have a radical gender ideology that’s been afoot even here in Iowa in public schools, I think, has been very harmful to our kids,” (again using the obscure word “afoot,” a favorite amongst irrelevant former VPs and 19th-century detectives).
The good news is that, according to Newsweek, Pence is less of a Presidential hopeful and more of a hopeless, as his chances of winning the presidency are pretty slim. Citing a YouGov/Yahoo News poll, Newsweek claimed that, had the election been held in early June, Donald Trump would have trounced his former running mate by nearly 60 percentage points. The bad news, of course, is that none of the other candidates likely to beat Pence are friendly to the trans community, either.
According to Them, Trump promised to ban transitions for minors and even suggested the radical idea of passing a law that defines gender as the sex assigned at birth (which, in usual Trump fashion, is a promise that he won’t be able to make good on). Florida governor Ron DeSantis is the best threat to Trump’s lead, and, given that DeSantis has gone out of its way to attack trans people in Florida, it’s likely he would do the same as president. It would seem that the best hope for trans rights in the next presidential administration would be for (*gags*) Biden to win re-election.
Photo courtesy of social media
What's Your Reaction?
