St. Joe-Benton Harbor News

Rep. Brad Paquette and Sen. Thomas Albert have introduced a legislative package aimed at prohibiting gender transition procedures for minors in Michigan. The proposed legislation, announced on Wednesday, seeks to ban health care providers from performing hormone treatments, sterilization surgeries, and genital alteration surgeries on minors. Exceptions would be made for minors with medically verifiable disorders of sex development or those facing imminent physical danger.

“It is time for the experimentation on children in the name of care to come to an end,” said Rep. Paquette. “Children are not born in the wrong body. No one has the right to maim a healthy child’s body to try to achieve the unachievable.”

The legislative plan also aims to expand patients' ability to seek damages for medical malpractice and mandates that health insurance providers cover detransition costs similarly as they do transition costs.

This announcement follows a recent comprehensive review by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regarding gender dysphoria treatments in minors, which raised concerns about puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries—procedures that would be banned under this new proposal.

Paquette and Albert were joined by Prisha Mosley and Jamie Reed during their announcement. Mosley is known nationally as a detransitioner from Big Rapids, while Reed gained attention as a whistleblower after working at Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

“It is critical that legislative bodies step in to protect children in this state from these dangerous and reckless practices,” said Reed at the press conference discussing Paquette's legislation. “I was complicit in harming patients because the protocol itself harms patients. There is no safe or legal way to sterilize a child, and there is no safe way to medically disrupt a functioning endocrine system.”

The bills have been read into record as House Bills 4466-4468 and referred to the House Committee on Health Policy. The press conference featuring Paquette, Albert, and Reed can be viewed on YouTube.