Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed legislation last week that bans puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment procedures for gender-confused children.

Her action makes Alabama the fourth state to protect gender dysphoric children from harmful drugs and surgeries. Medical professionals that violate the provisions of the new law could be convicted of a felony, which carries a prison term of up to ten years.

With other Republican-dominated states moving quickly on this pressing issue, where does Idaho stand?

House Bill 675

In February, Rep. Bruce Skaug (R-Nampa) and Sen. Steve Vick (R-Dalton Gardens) introduced our Vulnerable Child Protection Act (HB675), which would have followed the lead of these other states in banning irreversible pharmaceutical and surgical interventions for children struggling with gender dysphoria.

Initially, it seemed like the legislation had a fighting chance of making its way through the state legislature. The bill received broad support in the Idaho House of Representatives, where it passed with a veto-proof supermajority.

Idaho Senate Leadership Kills the Bill

But Republican leadership in the Idaho Senate, egged on by the Idaho Medical Association, moved quickly to kill the legislation before it could even get a Senate committee hearing.

Predictably, the Idaho Medical Association misrepresented the current state of the medical science, as well as the extent to which the problem exists in Idaho.

The self-proclaimed “medical experts” falsely told state legislators that puberty blockers are reversible, even when used for years in adolescence. They also downplayed the available peer-reviewed scientific evidence exposing the lifelong medical problems caused by cross-sex hormones, including irreparable infertility.

Public testimony in House committee conclusively verified our claim that some in-state doctors routinely prescribe off-label puberty blockers and high doses of cross-sex hormones to gender dysphoric children.

And even more, some teenagers in our state receive referrals for sex reassignment procedures – including penectomies, castration, mastectomies, and hysterectomies – that permanently maim and mutilate healthy sexual organs.

Put simply, the Idaho Medical Association wasn’t shooting straight with state legislators, local media, or the public. And Republican Senate leadership fell for their tall tale—hook, line, and sinker.

In a telling statement issued to the press, Idaho Senate Republican leadership erroneously stated that the bill would interfere with legitimate medical care for children with complex medical disorders.

For the record, the Vulnerable Child Protection Act only prevented the provision of drugs and surgical procedures for the purpose of attempting to change a child’s perceived sex; all legitimate applications for these drugs and surgeries would have remained legal.

In the same statement, Idaho Senate Republican leadership also insisted that the legislation supposedly violated a fundamental right of parents to consent to drugs and procedures that chemically and surgically castrate their children.

Such an assertion is not only laughable, but also quite ironic, considering that the state legislature unanimously passed a law just a couple years ago that prohibits parents from consenting to female genital mutilation on behalf of their children.

The Problem Remains

But this issue isn’t going away. As several doctors have told us, many medical associations have been ideologically captured by the gender activists. That includes the Idaho Medical Association, which has adopted guidelines encouraging doctors to administer drugs that sterilize and forever harm trans-identified children.

Likewise, dark cultural forces in schools and in the entertainment industry are working overtime to indoctrinate children into antibiblical beliefs—that gender is fluid, that biology doesn’t matter, and that happiness and meaning can be found on the other side of mutilating sex changes.

Our children are under attack. It’s past time for our Republican leaders in the Idaho Senate to come to terms with what is happening and to muster the courage needed to protect these vulnerable kids.

And as always, we promise to stay on top of this issue and keep you updated.