***California ballot initiative will seek to restrict gender-affirming care for trans youth***

A small group of activists want California voters to decide whether transgender minors should be allowed to receive puberty blockers, hormone therapy or gender-affirming surgeries.

The newly-formed group, Protect Kids California, announced plans Monday to petition for three 2024 ballot initiatives that would, respectively:

- Ban transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming medical care

- Ban trans girls from girls’ competitive sports and girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms

- Require public schools to disclose a student's gender identity to their parents, if the child is out at school

The group’s co-founder, Jonathan Zachreson, says providing gender-affirming care to minors could impair their future abilities to have children. Zachreson is also a Roseville City School Board member, and founded an organization dedicated to reopening California schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have a system in California that sells false choices and false hope to parents and their kids,” he said during a Monday press conference about the initiative petitions in Sacramento. “This bill of lies has been sold to many young people, especially young women, in California.”

Medical experts say the process to getting approved for any form of gender-affirming medical care requires a sustained record of gender incongruence. In California, it also requires parental permission. Fertility can be impaired when children go from puberty blockers straight to hormone therapy, so current medical guidelines require discussion of reversible and irreversible impacts prior to any gender-affirming medical care.

LGBTQ+ leaders and organizations say the types of proposals put forward by Protect Kids California are dangerous and harmful to California’s youth.


https://www.capradio.org/articles/2023/08/30/california-ballot-initiative-will-seek-to-restrict-gender-affirming-care-for-trans-youth/