The US House of Representatives passed the Protect Children’s Innocence Act on Wednesday. It seeks to prohibit “genital or body mutilation of a minor”. The bill would effectively ban gender-affirming treatment for transgender children.
The bill, sponsored by right-wing zealot Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), passed 216 to 211 and now heads to the Senate, where its fate is less certain.
What is the Protect Children’s Innocence Act?
The Protect the Innocence of Children bill, which has yet to be approved by the Senate, seeks to amend Section 116 of Title 18 of the United States Code with respect to genital mutilation and chemical castration of minors.
The Greene Act would make it a federal crime to perform various procedures. “My bill, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, would make it a crime to provide ‘gender-affirming care’ or ‘trans’ to minors under the age of 18,” Greene said in a post on X.
While the bill specifically criminalizes female genital mutilation (FGM), it also targets operations that aim to change a minor’s body “to conform to a gender different from their biological sex.”
It also bans some pharmacological forms of gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers.
Anyone who carries out or facilitates such practices faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine under the law.
“This important bill … will criminalize gender-affirming care on minors, not on adults, on minors who have not yet reached adult decision-making,” Greene said before the vote.
Representative Cory Mills, who voted for the bill, said the Protect Children’s Innocence Act “strengthens federal law to ensure that minors are protected from irreversible bodily harm, including genital mutilation and chemical castration.”
In line with Trump’s policy
Greene called the bill “a direct reflection of President Trump’s executive order and every 2024 Republican campaign promise.”
Trump campaigned aggressively against transgender policies last year and moved to repeal provisions recognizing different gender identities at the start of his second term.
His administration sought to ban transgender people from the military and cut funding from schools allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports.
Democrat Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, condemned the bill.
“Republican politicians are all about making the rich richer and attacking trans people,” the Delaware representative told reporters outside the Capitol.
Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE), a transgender rights group, said the bill “attempts to strip both transgender and intersex people of their freedom to make decisions about their own bodies.”
The group noted that the bill still allows operations on intersex children who are born with both female and male genitalia, calling them “non-consensual operations that are true cases of mutilation.”
The bill “is not about protecting children – it is about enforcing outdated ideas about sex and gender through coercion and violence,” said A4TE health policy analyst Sinead Murano-Kinney.
